Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health issues can prevent your teen from living life to the fullest. Without treatment, they cannot grow and thrive as they should. A teen treatment center can provide them with the care and support they need. Its program includes clinical and experiential modalities.

Residential Treatment

Residential treatment at a teen treatment center offers a safe environment for teens to get the help they need. These programs offer a full range of therapeutic services, including family therapy, individual therapy, and group therapy. They can also offer a variety of other therapies, such as art therapy or animal therapy. Teens with severe problems, such as addiction or eating disorders, may need a higher level of care than an outpatient program can provide. These facilities are able to provide the intensive treatment these teens need, with the help of professional staff and therapists who specialize in those issues.

For example, a teen in recovery from an eating disorder might find the support they need at Kallos House, a long-term residential program that specializes in treating eating disorders. The program uses a combination of therapies, including trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). This approach is used in conjunction with a healthy meal plan to address both the physical and emotional aspects of an eating disorder.

Continuing Care

Adolescents undergoing substance use disorder treatment are at high risk of returning to problematic substance use following discharge. Yet, most adolescents who enter treatment fail to complete their recommended program and do not connect with continuing care services upon discharge. A current approach aimed at increasing continuing care linkage rates is assertive continuing care (ACC). In this model, clinicians contact adolescents in their home community shortly after residential treatment to introduce them to recovery support services. These services can include mutual-aid groups like AA and SMART, recovery coaching programs, collegiate recovery communities, and recovery high schools.

These interventions vary in their design and delivery. However, all of them test the hypothesis that more frequent and targeted continuing care sessions are associated with better outcomes. In one study, adolescent youth randomized to ACC experienced higher initiation rates of continuing care and stayed engaged longer than those in the service-as-usual condition. The ACC model also produced medium to large effects on abstinence from marijuana over nine months.

Social Support

If your teen has gotten into trouble with school and/or the law, they may need more intensive treatment. This is especially true if their behavior has been volatile and they have exhibited violent outbursts or a strong desire to hurt themselves or others. Residential treatment centers are live-in healthcare facilities where teens follow a structured schedule of clinical care and experiential therapy. Therapists, counselors, dietitians and nurses provide support to help patients heal.

Level 1 programs offer less supervision and more independence for teens whose mental health issues aren’t severe enough for a psychiatric hospital program. These programs include independent living teen homes, therapeutic boarding schools and stay-away wilderness therapy programs. Level 2 adolescent residential treatment programs provide the most intensive supervision and security. These programs resemble a mental health hospital and are designed to support adolescents who pose safety concerns for themselves or other people. They receive individual counseling and learn to modify their defiant and aggressive behaviors through a trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) approach.

Addiction Treatment

Many teen treatment centers offer focused therapy for specific mental health disorders. For example, a residential program may focus on gender-specific or age-specific conditions, such as depression in teens or bipolar disorder in adolescents. A specialized program will have therapists and counselors that are highly trained and empathetic to those suffering from these conditions. These programs also provide a safe environment and supervised 24/7, making it harder for teens to relapse or engage in self-harm.

Some teen treatment centers also offer dual diagnosis, meaning that they will treat both a mental illness and addiction at the same time. Teens in need of dual diagnosis treatment typically have co-occurring disorders, like anxiety and depression. These teens often need more supervised care and stricter rules than what is available in outpatient programs. Level 3 facilities are better equipped to handle defiant or self-harming teens and have higher security that resembles a mental hospital. They may also offer educational assistance.

Conclusion

A teen treatment center can be a life-changing experience for teens struggling with underlying mental health issues. Residential treatment programs take at-risk teens out of their normal environment and away from stressors, triggers, and temptations that may be contributing to their drug or alcohol use.