Safe, Structured Behavioral Health Care for Your Teen
Our Youth Residential Treatment (YRT) program is a secure, live-in facility licensed to provide affirming mental and behavioral care to struggling teens and adolescents. We treat female youth between the ages of 12-17 who would benefit from tailored, intensive mental health care and are not able to remain safely in the community. This level of care we provide offers a safe and structured environment for your adolescent to be observed, evaluated, and treated by our professionally trained, multi-disciplinary team.
Our goal is to help your child develop the skills and coping mechanisms they need to lead a healthy and successful life. Each teen’s treatment is individualized and unique to their presenting problems, which means we do not have a standardized length of stay. Treatment plans vary between one to three months.
We strongly value fostering an experience of accepting and belonging for all the individuals in our care and recognize that adolescence is a period of self-exploration, individuation, and self-expression.
"Thank you so much for everything. My daughter is comfortable in her own skin now and has taken her tools and teachings to heart. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Services Our Program Provides
Virtual Tour of Our Treatment Center
Facility Amenities
Our residential treatment center provides a friendly and inviting environment for patients:
- Double occupancy rooms to encourage peer support and positive social interactions.
- Meals served family style with staff.
- Bright and sunny day rooms and classrooms to create a peaceful and safe healing space.
“The treatment team was amazing. They communicated well with us. Our doctor went above and beyond to help us and make sure my daughter was getting the treatment she needed. Everybody we encountered was amazing, helpful, and answered all of our questions.”
Treating Teen Mental Health with a Multidisciplinary Team
Our highly trained, multidisciplinary group of specialists and mental health professionals are actively involved in your teen's treatment. Our team of multidisciplinary providers work collaboratively with teens and their parents to set treatment goals and develop an individualized treatment plan:
- Board-certified child psychiatrist
- Psychologist / psychologist trainee under the supervision of a licensed psychologist
- Social worker or mental health counselor
- Education coordinator
- Expressive therapists (music, art, and recreation therapy)
- Nurses
- Psychiatric technicians
- Registered dietitian (as needed)
Family Role in Treatment
Parents play an active and crucial role by being involved in helping in the development of your teens’ treatment goals, actively participating in family therapy, attending our family DBT group, weekly phone calls and visits throughout your teens stay.
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Common Behavioral and Mental Health Issues in Teens
We have expertise in the following, but not limited to:
- Mood disorders (e.g., depression, bipolar disorders)
- Anxiety disorders (e.g., generalized anxiety disorder, OCD)
- Trauma-related issues (e.g., PTSD)
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Comorbid substance abuse disorder
Our clients may struggle with a range of behaviors:
- Mood instability
- Running away behavior
- Substance use
- Arguing with their parents
- Poor coping skills
- Self-injury/self-harming behavior
- Poor self-image
- Ongoing suicidal thoughts or attempts
”The groups and how welcoming, fun, caring the staff is here. Honestly, they made being here more easy to accept...I feel [my mom and I] both got to be heard and I feel like [our relationship] is going to get stronger.”
Treatments and Therapies
In our program, we use dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) — an evidence-based treatment we use for teens who have a difficult time controlling their emotions and behaviors.
Emotional and behavioral dysregulation (abnormality or impairment) often contribute to a teen’s ability to develop a stable sense of self. This includes making and maintaining fulfilling, healthy relationships with peers and family. Behavior that is impulsive or avoidant can be a result of emotion dysregulation or an effort to try to regulate or gain control.
The following five skill sets have been designed to treat the problems that are associated with emotional dysregulation:
- Mindfulness assists adolescents with increasing their self-awareness and attentional control while decreasing suffering and increasing pleasure.
- Distress tolerance teaches ways to decrease impulsivity and accept reality as it is.
- Emotion regulation teaches a teen how to increase positive emotions and decrease negative emotions.
- Interpersonal effectiveness teaches teens how to improve in making and maintaining relationships with peer and family members and build self-respect.
- Walking the middle path skills teach ways to decrease family conflict through validation, behavior change principles, and dialectical thinking and behaving.
Our program also uses behavior management techniques to promote and generalize positive behavioral change at home, school, and in the community. Research supports positive reinforcement as the most effective behavior management technique used to increase a desired behavior. The program uses a variety of positive behavioral supports to help shape and assist clients in making positive choices both in the program and in the community.
Expressive Therapy
Expressive therapy helps clients express their feelings in a safe and supportive environment. This type of treatment draws on metaphor, symbolic representation, and somatic (relating to the body) awareness. Our skilled, licensed expressive therapists will lead art, music, and recreation groups. Recreational therapy will also include our ROPES Challenge Course.
Our On-Site Educational Academy
During treatment in our facility, teens will spend a block of time each day engaged in academic work through University Academy — our Cognia-accredited, on-site, private school. University Academy bridges the gap between school and treatment by providing modified educational services during the day.
Many of our students have experienced academic challenges as a result of their mental health issues. By giving teens the opportunity to continue their academic studies throughout treatment, our team is able to observe how they cope with academic challenges, stress, and homework.
In addition, our academic program compliments the therapeutic program by teaching and reinforcing effective coping skills for teens that can be used in any academic setting. Our goal is to help your teen move forward with their academic credit and goals while they are in treatment.
“I could tell that their therapist really cared about my child’s well-being and progress. She had support at all hours. When she was having a hard time, there was always someone there for her to talk to. They were patient with her and never gave up. It seems like they thought of everything that they could do to help her succeed. The teacher in school was very caring about her learning and was wonderful and intuitive about individualized learning and working with my child’s strengths."
