The founder of a Pahrump-based mental health company foresees a positive future through a recent acquisition.
Jeremy Setters started I.C.A.N. Family Services in Pahrump roughly eight years ago, a mental health company mostly focused on adolescents. Las Vegas-based TrueCare Treatment Centers, which owns a local mental health company named Illuminations Psychiatry and Mental Health Counseling in Pahrump at 1601 E. Basin Avenue, Suite 103, recently purchased I.C.A.N.
Setters, director of program development for TrueCare’s rural programs, said Illuminations entered the Pahrump area about a year ago with I.C.A.N. jumping on board with them in 2019.
“It’s been a great experience,” Setters said. “Everybody who works for the company is basically from here in some capacity, so it’s been amazing.”
Setters himself has lived in the Pahrump area most of his life.
“You really have to be from the area to kind of know the issues of the area,” Setters said. “Substance use is such a large problem in the community, that when I saw it, it was something that I became passionate about.”
Setters continued: “It’s touched me directly in my close personal life. I’ve dealt with it, you know, family and friends have just been victims of substance addiction, and it’s been really tough. But now I’m in a position with my education and background with bringing together a group of amazing staff, we’re able to really help the community on the forefront.”
Setters said he moved to Pahrump in 1995.
“And when I moved here, there was no movie theatre, no McDonald’s,” he said. “We had one store, it was called PJs, and there was nothing to do. When you have nothing to do, and the economy cuts, you can sometimes turn toward bad habits to cope. Those are what we call maladaptive coping skills in our industry, and substances just seem like an easy out from reality.”
“What we try to do at ICAN, Illuminations and TrueCare is help them find the hope that there is something better and there’s life past substance use,” Setters said.
“We do a combination of two things: We do the mental health side of things, and then we do the substance abuse side of things, so Illuminations and I.C.A.N. are the direct mental health practices,” Setters said. “We do help with drug treatment as well. We have approvals to do drug treatment at both locations. But the sister company, TrueCare, is the more drugs and alcohol treatment.”
He explained that “through TrueCare, they do individual therapy, they do drug treatment, they do partial hospitalizations. When somebody comes in from the community and has issues with substance abuse that they can’t manage with them in the community, they’ll be hospitalized for maybe seven to 10 days, maybe longer if they need it.”
Setters said an inpatient program is in the works for Pahrump.
“We’re looking at locations right now for when that might come through,” he said. “The IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) is something we’re going to be starting fairly soon because that’s something that Illuminations and I.C.A.N. can do right now.”
Contact reporter Jeffrey Meehan at jmeehan@pvtimes.com