Once an adolescent has been admitted to the residential program, our treatment team specializes in working with each individual adolescent to develop an individualized treatment plan to meet his/her specific needs. Our exceptional treatment team is comprised of the following committed professionals: a medical director, licensed therapists, master’s leveled therapists, mental health specialists, educational counselors, the clinical manager, operations manager and consulting clinicians. The treatment team delivers a full range of clinical and educational services. Our program is designed to offer each adolescent a blend of traditional therapeutic services and new innovate clinically proven methods. The holistic plan includes psychiatric care, medication management, group therapy, academic instruction, milieu intervention, individual and family therapy.
Family therapy is one of the most important aspects of our residential treatment. We work closely with the family from the beginning of treatment, integrating the whole support system in the therapy process. Family therapy helps prepare the family to support the positive changes the adolescent has made in treatment and helps all of the family members examine the areas they struggle with. Without adequate intervention, families tend to repeat negative patterns of interaction that sabotage the gains the adolescent has made while in treatment.
The adolescent will benefit from a highly structured therapeutic milieu, which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each adolescent is responsible for maintaining the living environment and earning privileges through a graduated tier system. The environment is warm, comfortable, and structured. Structure in the program includes daily routines, community meetings, school, therapeutic groups and activities. All of the individual therapy, group therapy, milieu intervention, and family therapy provide our adolescents with the opportunity to have successful experiences, improve their self-esteem, and enrich social understanding.
Partial Hospitalization Treatment
Our partial hospitalization program (day treatment) is a structured, short-term active treatment that is operable at a minimum of 6 hours per day, 7 days per week. Adolescents are not cared for on a 24-hour per day basis, and leave the program each evening. Partial hospitalization treatment is provided by the same highly qualified treatment team mentioned above in the residential program. Partial hospitalization is an alternative to residential treatment and offers intensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary clinical services for adolescents that are able to function in the community at a minimally appropriate level and do not present as an imminent potential for harm to themselves or others.
Our partial program is designed as a step down to a lower level of care from our residential program for those adolescents that still need individualized academic instruction, individual therapy, and family therapy. However, completion of our residential program is not required for an adolescent to participate in the partial hospitalization program.
Intensive Outpatient Program ("IOP")
Intensive outpatient program is a structured, short-term treatment program that provides only individual therapy, group therapy, and family therapy. "IOP" is the lowest level of care we offer and usually meets at least three times per week, providing a minimum of 3 hours of treatment per session.
Adolescents at this level demonstrate some capacity to be in the home environment and attend school off site — however; adolescents still need the support provided by treatment groups and family therapy. Completion of residential treatment or partial hospitalization treatment is not required for placement in the "IOP."
Our approach to teen treatment includes four components: (i) psychiatric and psychological treatment (ii) psychosocial treatment (iii) education and (iv) spiritual growth.
PSYCHIATRIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT
Psychiatric Treatment
Psychiatric treatment is administered by our child and adolescent psychiatrist who uses knowledge of biological, psychological, and social factors in working with our clients. Initially, a comprehensive diagnostic examination is performed to evaluate the current problem with attention to its physical, genetic, developmental, emotional, cognitive, educational, family, peer, and social components. Our psychiatrist then, arrives at a diagnosis and diagnostic formulation which are shared with the client and their family. Both the psychiatrist and treatment team then design a treatment plan which considers all the components and discusses these recommendations with the child and adolescent’s family.
Our approach to psychiatric treatment involves individual, group or family psychotherapy; medication management; and/or consultation with other physicians or professionals from schools, juvenile courts, social agencies or other community organizations.
Psychological Treatment
The psychological component is administered by a therapist who assesses the client's needs within 72 hours of admission. The goal is to derive a thorough history and began to generate a diagnosis and individualized treatment plan with the child and adolescent psychiatrist and other members of the treatment team.
Psychological intervention will include the following core services as tailored and deemed appropriate for each client:
* » Psychiatric care
* » Individual psychotherapy
* » Family therapy
* » Daily psychotherapeutic groups
* » Support groups
* » Task oriented life skill groups
* » Family support groups
Psychosocial Treatment
In the psychosocial aspect of treatment, teenagers learn how to access available resources for recreational activities: use of public pools, parks, recreational programs, NA/AA/CA meetings, YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, Churches, and libraries.
We encourage our clients to learn healthy recreational activities to work through feelings of addiction, remorse, depression, guilt, shame, etc. Client’s explore and discuss their feelings and the discomfort of building a new social network and making new friends who are not interested in self-destructive activities such as drug use, self-harm, violence behaviors and poor impulsivity. In this process, our clients practice and build skills for positive and satisfying social interactions; they are able to discover their creativity, talents, and personal interest.
Also apart of psychosocial treatment are our daily psychotherapeutic groups or group therapy. Group therapy is a daily and vital aspect of clients’ treatment at Adolescent Growth. While each client’s treatment plan is tailored to individual needs, group therapy allows our clients to not only connect with others who are experiencing similar issues, but also to learn from others’ unique experiences.
Our group therapists utilize well-known methods that have produced desired effects in countless research studies. Groups can be structured or discussion based, and therapists use art, music, film, media stories, role-play, and other tools to facilitate healing in the group environment. Groups offered are the following:
Substance Abuse
Aim: To educate our clients about the various physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual consequences of drug use. Psycho-education via handouts and instructional videos is used to teach clients specific consequences of different drugs, and clients are encouraged to share personal stories.
Spirituality for the Recovering Individual
Aim: To help our clients develop a sense of being part of something larger than themselves, and to promote awareness one’s purpose in life. Clients are encouraged to share personal experiences with spirituality, religion, God, or a higher power. Readings, art therapy, music therapy, and open discussion are used to guide clients in examining the link between spirituality, healing, and accountability.
Healing the Addicted Mind
Aim: To assist clients in understanding and correcting faulty thinking patterns that contribute to issues such as addiction and other self-destructive behaviors (cutting, overeating, food restriction), depression, anxiety, and anger. Clients are guided in examining and understanding their own faulty thinking patterns, and how these affect their emotions and behavior. They are then taught to challenge and correct those thinking patterns by implementing principles of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Relapse Prevention
Aim: To arm our clients with an array of tools to prevent relapse of self-destructive behaviors such as drinking, drug use, cutting, overeating, and food restriction. Psycho-education via handouts, personal success stories, and brainstorming are used to help clients identify relapse prevention tools that they can use after discharge to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Clients are also challenged to explore how their peer choices affect their behavior choices.
Self-Esteem
Aim: To strengthen self-esteem by highlighting our clients’ strengths and encouraging self-care. Art therapy, music therapy, and open discussion are used to define self-esteem and its role in clients’ functioning. Clients are taught to recognize their strengths, affirm themselves, and validate their thoughts and feelings. Brainstorming is used to identify daily strategies for strengthening self-esteem. Often issues of past abuse surface during this group, and clients are offered a safe and supportive environment in which healing can take place.
Family Dynamics
Aim: To help our clients understand family systems theory and how it applies to their own families. Psycho-education, art therapy, and role-play are used to guide clients in exploring their own family dynamics and understanding how each family member’s behavior affects the entire family system in both positive and negative ways.
Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution
Aim: To improve clients’ ability to deal with interpersonal conflict in productive, non-violent ways. Clients are invited to share personal stories of witnessing or being involved in interpersonal conflict. Open discussion, role-play, and therapist/peer feedback are used to examine the cycle of violence and teach how to use problem solving to resolve conflict in healthy ways.
Anger Management and Relationship Issues
Aim: To improve clients’ ability to tolerate frustration without lashing out at others or engaging in self-destructive behaviors. Psycho-education via handouts and worksheets are used to help clients identify their anger triggers and physiological cues that they are becoming angry. Open discussion, brainstorming, and role-play are used to help clients learn to control anger in assertive rather than aggressive ways.
Long-Term Sobriety Goals
Aim: To encourage our clients to consider how abstaining from self-destructive behaviors will enrich their futures. Art therapy, open discussion, and structured writing assignments are used to help clients think about where they want to be one year, five years, or ten years from now, and the role sobriety will play in them achieving their goals.
Behavior Group
Aim: To promote daily efforts towards self-generated weekly goals that relates to our clients’ individual treatment plans. Upon entering treatment, each client develops a goal with specific behavioral components that can be practiced every day. During this daily group, each client restates his or her goal and reports on how he or she worked toward that goal since the last group. Clients are held accountable for working towards their goals by linking their efforts to promotion in our tier system.
Process Group
Aim: To allow our clients to share and process challenges and successes related to treatment. This daily, open-discussion group is used to allow clients to share anything that is on their minds. Therapist and peer feedback is used to help clients process their thoughts and feelings about both obstacles in treatment and positive strides towards goals.
Education
An academic facilitator is staffed and on site to design, manages and executes an individualized academic plan for each client. The education part of the program is an individually paced study of traditional junior and high school courses. This allows the client to confront troubled areas, which may block academic and social growth. We take education very seriously and we realize that academics directly impact each client’s future.
The school program is operated on a twelve-month basis. The curriculum meets all legal requirements of the Education Code.
We have three school options for clients -- they are as follows:
1. Set up a system with the client's regular school. We explain to the school teacher that his/her student is now in our program, but would still like to stay on track while they are at Adolescent Growth. Each week when the parents come for therapy sessions, they would bring weekly assignments from the student's school so that she/he could complete the work. Once the student completes the assignments we will give it back to the parent for the parent to turn it in to the student's regular teacher. With this system the student will be able to stay on track and continue to earn credits from his/her home school.
2. An independent studies charter school: Every Monday and Wednesday we take several students to our school where students can work independently through high school course work. In order to have a student enrolled in this program we would need a copy of his/her student transcript, a copy of immunization records, and something from the student's regular school (letter, attendance sheet, transcript with end date, etc.) stating that he or she is withdrawn from school or the last day the student attended school. With this option, clients can amass school credits while in our residential and partial programs. Credits can be transferred to a client’s home school upon completion of treatment.
3. We provide enrichment work for students (writing assignments, novels and work to accompany the novels, math assignments, therapeutic work). Students will not get any credit for the work they do, it will only be enrichment.
Spirituality
We define spirituality as the courage to look within and to trust. What is seen and what is trusted is a deep sense of belonging, of wholeness, of connectedness and of openness to self. Spirituality is crucial in recovering and reclaiming self dignity and self respect because we believe that to make mistakes in life is to find your life. The connection between psychology and spirituality encourages troubled teens to find and connect themselves to a higher calling and purpose in life.