ARCA – Assisted Recovery Centers of America

The Assisted Recovery Centers of America (ARCA), established in 2001, has become the region’s premier center for mental health and addiction treatment services. Since its early years, ARCA has worked closely with community partners to provide compassionate and innovative care to promote healing and thriving for individuals, families, and communities. We are a behavioral health organization providing a full continuum of integrated services to adult patients with substance use and other behavioral disorders.  Our goal is to partner with our patients and their loved ones so that they can lead rewarding, prosperous lives that build on their assets, skills, and capabilities.

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Today, we operate;

• Three (3) Behavioral health care outpatient treatment locations in the greater St. Louis area

• Thirty-one (31)Telehealth collaborating agency sites throughout the State of Missouri

• Fifteen (15) Transitional living supportive housing facilities throughout the City of St. Louis

• One (1) Mobile Treatment Clinic

We deliver our services through ambulatory care offices, telehealth, and transitional housing programs.  A variety of treatment venues allows us to provide the entire continuum of care to tailor treatment specifically to an individual’s needs regardless of where they are.  Our programs and facilities provide a continuum of treatment services including comprehensive assessment, medically assisted treatment (including medical detoxification and stabilization on anti-craving medications), and behavioral health services for people with co-occurring disorders (including but not limited to; anxiety, depressive disorders, sleep disorders, bipolar and other psychotic disorders, and trauma). 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the unmet need for mental health and substance use services in the United States was significant. Alarmingly, less than half of adults with mental health conditions received services in 2019, and the percentage was even lower in the Black and Latino communities. As for substance use, 90% of people with a substance use disorder did not receive treatment. That is why access to care for behavioral health and addiction is necessary. Addressing them together through an integrated treatment model is critical for long-term recovery and thriving.

As COVID-19 again magnified the inequities faced by many of our region’s Black and other historically under-resourced communities, ARCA reimagined service delivery, mobilized its workforce, and acquired the necessary resources to meet people where they live, work, play, and worship. The mobile treatment unit supports efforts to combat the region’s mental health and addiction crisis by providing free comprehensive treatment three times a week at locations determined by ARCA’s faith-based community partners.  The mobile team includes certified peer specialists, therapists, nurses, and prescribing providers, many of whom live in the same communities. The mobile treatment unit provides a real-time entry point into addiction treatment services, and harm reduction services, such as the opioid overdose reversal agent, naloxone, and other health prevention, education, and navigation services.  The key to the mobile unit is the provision of entry into health care; ARCA staff and community partners provide navigation for people for continuity of care services at locally established health care partner programs.