Asian Behavioral Clinic

Fully aware of the community that surrounds them, Flushing Hospital Medical Center's Department of Psychiatry officially opened its Asian Behavioral Clinic on January 1, 2002.

The Behavioral Clinic was started to offer monolingual Chinese and Korean people the much-needed opportunity to receive mental health assistance. The area that Flushing Hospital serves has a large number of Chinese and Korean residents, many of which don't speak English and are at a high risk of developing mental illness, such as depression due to their inability to get proper assistance. The Asian Behavioral Clinic can offer them those services in an environment that is comfortable to them and caters to their specific needs. Some of the many ways the new clinic caters to the Asian community is by offering an entire staff of Physiatrists, Therapists and support staff that are bilingual, speaking either Korean or the Cantonese or Mandarin dialects of Chinese. The clinic also has dedicated telephone numbers in each language for patients to speak with mental health professionals and make appointments.

The idea to start this service belonged to Dr. Seeth Vivek, who had past success with a similar program for the Indo-American community at Flushing Hospital. Dr Vivek asked Dr Peter Chu to oversee the operations of the Asian Behavioral Clinic. Dr. Chu was an easy choice because of his prior success running a program like this one at another hospital. According to Dr Chu, "The existence of the clinic is very important because by offering these services, we can help treat a large portion of our community and avoid further mental illness."

The clinic offers a variety of services for both adults and children, including evaluations as well as individual, group, and family therapy. It is located on the third floor of the hospital and its currently open on Monday, from 4:30 to 8:30 P.M. and again on Thursdays, from 8:30 A.M. until 12:30 P.M., with plans to expand in the future as needed. It accepts most insurance and a sliding scale fee is available for those who do not have insurance.