Finding the Appropriate Residential Treatment Program

Parents taking and making the time to listen, and providing therapeutic support from a community therapist or school counselor can sometimes be all that is necessary to help a teen put events in perspective and be able to move on with their lives. When this isn’t enough, some communities have other resources: day treatment programs, regular youth groups, and more.

But what do you do when years of therapy, local resources, and, in some cases, a variety of psychiatric approaches, fail to arrest a dangerous spiral? Such situations may be filled with coping behaviors by the teen such as “cutting” (often to release pain), eating disordered behaviors (often a way to have control), sexually acting out (to gain approval), and self-medication through drug or alcohol experimentation. Parents and professionals jointly work together to make determinations about what is “normal teen stuff” and what is really a dangerous response to trauma. Many suicides and/or other significantly destructive acts are preceded by these warning signs—clear signs that for this particular teen, all is not well!

Residential treatment programs are created for just such a scenario. While there are many different types and approaches to residential treatment, in general it provides a safe, 24/7 supervised environment, an accredited education setting, and therapy in varying amounts. The result is that parents and students are offered the distance and separation that allows each to regroup, learn new skills, and ideally start over again in the future.

Other elements are also crucial to the efficacy of residential treatment programs: daily group therapy and at least-weekly individual therapy can provide the needed therapeutic frequency and intensity; a more structured environment makes life more predictable—a key step in reducing anxiety and stress that make a student more willing to work through prior trauma; a healthier lifestyle—this one might seem obvious, but simply having a teen eat better, relearn how to live life without texting and living on the internet, and make progress in school and on therapeutic issues (not optional in this type of setting) set them up to live better and be happier than they have been, in many cases, for years. The culmination of all of these steps is that for many, a residential treatment program can be a life-changing and even a life-saving experience.

The next article in this series will discuss how to choose the right residential treatment center.