What Parents Can Expect

The first phase of care focuses on safety, stabilization, and understanding what your teen truly needs.

For many teens, arriving at treatment comes after a period of emotional intensity, crisis, or escalating behaviors. Residential treatment provides a contained, highly supervised environment where your teen can slow down, feel safe, and begin to regulate before deeper work begins.

During this phase, our clinical team conducts comprehensive assessments that look beyond surface behaviors. We evaluate mental health symptoms, emotional regulation, family stressors, academic history, substance use if present, and overall functioning. This allows us to build an individualized treatment plan rather than relying on assumptions or labels alone.

Parents can expect frequent communication during this period, especially as assessments are completed and treatment goals are clarified. This phase often brings emotional reactions from teens, including resistance or frustration, which is both common and expected.

Once stabilization has occurred, treatment begins to focus on the underlying issues driving your teen’s struggles.

This phase is where therapeutic work deepens. Teens participate in individual therapy, group therapy, and skill-building sessions designed to help them understand their emotions, behaviors, and patterns. Treatment may address anxiety, depression, trauma, mood instability, impulsivity, self-harm behaviors, substance use, or difficulty with relationships and authority.

Progress during this stage is rarely linear. Some teens may appear to “push back” just as meaningful work begins. Others may experience emotional ups and downs as they learn to tolerate discomfort without old coping strategies. This does not mean treatment is failing. In many cases, it means your teen is beginning to engage in real change.

Parents are supported in understanding what is happening clinically so that difficult moments are not misinterpreted as setbacks.

Healing does not happen in isolation. As teens prepare to step down from residential care, treatment increasingly focuses on reintegration and family dynamics.

Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP) allow teens to practice skills in real-world settings while maintaining clinical support. This phase often includes more active family therapy, communication work, and planning around boundaries, expectations, and support at home.

Families learn how to respond differently, not perfectly. The goal is not to eliminate conflict but to create safer, healthier ways of navigating it together. Parents are guided through this transition so that home becomes a place that supports continued growth rather than unintentionally recreating old patterns.

It is very common for teens to call home and say they hate treatment, want to leave, or feel miserable.

These statements can be distressing for parents, especially when guilt or fear is already present. However, emotional volatility is often part of the adjustment process. Learning new skills, facing uncomfortable truths, and being removed from familiar coping mechanisms can feel overwhelming at first.

Our clinical team helps parents interpret these calls in context and provides guidance on how to respond in ways that support long-term healing rather than short-term relief.

Clinical therapies form the foundation of your teen’s treatment. These evidence-based approaches are led by licensed professionals and are designed to help teens understand their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors while developing healthier ways to cope with stress and challenges. 

Each therapy is selected based on your teen’s individual needs, ensuring care is both structured and deeply personalized.

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT helps teens understand the connection between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Many struggling teens experience rigid or distorted thinking patterns that fuel anxiety, depression, anger, or impulsive decisions. CBT teaches teens how to recognize unhelpful thoughts, challenge them, and replace them with healthier, more accurate ways of thinking.
  
  
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): DBT is especially effective for teens who experience intense emotions, mood swings, self-harm urges, or difficulty managing conflict. DBT focuses on teaching concrete skills such as emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness. Rather than trying to eliminate emotions, DBT helps teens learn how to experience feelings safely without becoming overwhelmed by them.
  
  
• Individual Therapy: Individual therapy provides a private, one-on-one space for teens to explore their thoughts, experiences, and challenges at their own pace. This setting allows for deeper work around trauma, identity, self-esteem, grief, or issues that feel too sensitive to discuss in a group. The therapist builds trust with your teen and helps them develop insight, coping strategies, and personal goals.
  ‍
• ‍Family Therapy: Family therapy recognizes that teen mental health challenges affect the entire family system. These sessions focus on improving communication, rebuilding trust, addressing patterns that may unintentionally contribute to conflict, and helping parents and teens understand one another more clearly. Family therapy is not about blame. It is about learning new ways to support one another, set healthy boundaries, and move forward together.

Holistic therapies support emotional healing by engaging the whole person, not just symptoms.

These approaches help teens regulate stress, build self-awareness, and express emotions in ways that feel natural and accessible. When combined with clinical therapies, holistic modalities reinforce progress, increase engagement, and help teens develop skills they can carry into daily life.

• Music Therapy: Music therapy uses creative expression to help teens process emotions that may be difficult to put into words. Through listening, writing, or creating music, teens can safely explore feelings, reduce stress, and build emotional awareness. This modality often resonates with teens who struggle with traditional talk therapy or who connect more naturally through creative outlets.
  
  
• Equine Therapy: Equine therapy helps teens develop emotional awareness, responsibility, confidence, and trust through guided interactions with horses. Horses are highly sensitive to emotional cues, which allows teens to see how their emotions and behaviors affect others in real time.
  
  
• Art Therapy: Art therapy provides a nonverbal way for teens to express emotions, experiences, and internal conflicts. Creating art can help teens externalize feelings that feel overwhelming or confusing and gain insight into their inner world.
  
  
• Pet-Assisted Therapy: Pet-assisted therapy incorporates trained animals into the therapeutic environment to promote comfort, emotional regulation, and connection. Interacting with animals can reduce anxiety, increase engagement, and help teens feel safer opening up.
  
  
• Yoga and Mindfulness Practices: Yoga and mindfulness practices help teens reconnect with their bodies and learn how to regulate stress responses. These practices teach breathing techniques, grounding skills, and awareness of physical sensations, which can be especially helpful for anxiety, trauma, and emotional dysregulation.
  ‍‍
• Trauma-Informed Book Studies: Trauma-informed book studies help teens understand their experiences through guided reading and discussion. These groups normalize emotional struggles, build insight, and create opportunities for reflection and connection. Teens often feel less alone as they recognize shared experiences and learn language for what they are going through.

Treatment extends beyond therapy sessions. Education, life skills training, and medication support work together to help teens build stability, confidence, and daily functioning. These services ensure that emotional growth is supported by practical skills, academic continuity, and thoughtful medical care, creating a well-rounded foundation for long-term success.

• Education Services and Life Skills Training: Academic support and life skills development are integrated into treatment to help teens maintain momentum and build confidence. This includes educational coordination, tutoring when appropriate, and instruction in practical skills such as time management, organization, communication, and problem-solving. These services help teens prepare for success both during and after treatment.
  ‍‍
• Medication Management: When medication is part of a teen’s treatment plan, it is carefully evaluated and monitored by qualified medical providers. Medications are never adjusted without parental involvement and informed consent. The goal of medication management is to support emotional stability and therapeutic progress, not to replace therapy or learning coping skills.