Therapeutic Services

Family services
Families are offered weekly therapeutic sessions with one of our licensed therapists. These family sessions are designed to enhance communication skills and foster education on adolescent development. The effects of specific mental health disorders are taught in order to decrease hostilities, enhance empathy, increase understanding and develop effective problem-solving skills. Families are involved in goal development throughout the sessions, and participate in the completion of an after-care agreement.

Individual services
Residents and day treatment students receive weekly therapeutic sessions with one of our licensed therapists. Sessions are designed to promote self awareness and evaluate the client’s ability to make choices, deal with problems, and to challenge him or her to change the way he or she handles stress, relates to others and makes decisions.

Dependency and Addiction services
The dependency and abuse program is divided into two separate components. The first component is educational services regarding chemical addiction and its impact on individuals, families and society. This is a basic curriculum offered to all residents of Reflections for Youth. The course is delivered in a once per week group run by line staff during the evening program at each of the three Reflections facilities.

The second component is a treatment program designed to increase self-awareness and learn skills to promote personal growth, forgiveness, health and well being. The program is divided into several phases. The initial phase emphasizes enhancing awareness surrounding the patterns of thoughts, beliefs and emotions that enhance risk or directly contribute to dependency and abuse of substances. The second phase involves participation in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy to increase skills to regulate emotions, manage and grow relationships and increase self awareness. The final phase of the program allows residents the opportunity to set realistic goals for relapse prevention based on increased self-awareness and the development of new coping and relationship skills. The core components of the program are all based on evidenced based practice with significant outcome results.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) was developed by Marsha Linehan in the 1980’s and made available to the public in the early 1990’s. The initial clientele studies were all conducted with Borderline Personality Disorder patients. This diagnosis had historically shown the most dismal outcomes in therapy with clients rarely improving and often dropping out of treatment. The protocol established for DBT showed highly successful and significant results with this population. The clients significantly reduced symptoms of despair, suicide attempts and overall chaos in their lives. More recently DBT has been applied to a wide variety of disorders and symptoms and been shown to be extremely effective in clients developing a sense of stability, confidence and direction.

DBT is a mode therapy that enhances and develops effective skills that assist in finding balance in conflicting areas of life. These conflicts are present in most lives and represent two truths that often oppose each other. One example is our desire to be our own unique individual and our desire to be loved and attached to others. DBT suggests that finding balance in life can help develop emotional and social stability through awareness our inner self and core values.

Clients in DBT participate in individual therapy, DBT skills group, program assignments and support in learning the skills. Each client signs a disclosure and statement of commitment to practice skills and record their observations on diary cards. Skill practice and development is monitored through the client diary cards, self-report, the individual therapist, the DBT team evaluations, and the reduction of behavioral outbursts in the program and while on home passes.

You can find more information regarding DBT and skill development at Marsha Linehan’s site: www.behavioraltech.org

Family to Family services
Family to Family offers in home support to youth and their families. Goal of this service is for youth to remain in home or guide a successful transition. Clinical staff work closely with the Reflections therapist to gain information on goals within the family system to insure the goals are being put into action. Family to family offers a direct link for the parents to the program by meeting weekly and offering parent coaching.

Contact us for more information.