Family Therapy and Parent Coaching
Supporting Families Every Step of the Way
At the Ridge, we recognize that supporting families is critical to helping teens achieve stability and, ultimately, sustainable recovery. That’s why every family is assigned a dedicated Family Support Specialist to guide them through the treatment process.With the “mindset of a professional” and the “heart of a parent,” the support specialist helps families be a healthy part of the healing process by:
- Demystifying and explaining the treatment process and what to expect, with an aim for parents meeting their children where they “are” and supporting growth rather than driving expectations.
- Facilitating communication with the clinical team.
- Managing expectations and supplying experiential guidance.
- Preparing families for post-treatment.
- Adjusting the family system through coaching and the development of healthy boundaries.
- Helping to create a new foundation for healthy communication.
Personalized Support
The support specialist is in touch weekly to coach families through challenges like:
- Navigating treatment milestones
- Setting realistic expectations
- Empowering versus controlling parenting
- Using communication techniques to avoid unintentional messages of shame, guilt, and doubt.
Group Sessions
Families will also attend weekly group sessions covering important psychoeducation topics, followed by discussion. The discussion component is conducted so that parents can express themselves and discuss challenges without breaking child confidentiality. These sessions often help parents identify key areas where they may need further support or education.
How Does Family Involvement Help Manage Mental Health?
Family support is the backbone that keeps mental health sufferers going through the darkest times. Ridge RTC integrates this vital family support system by involving the family in the daily process of your loved one’s mental health management. The core of all the family integration methods revolves around open communication. With communication as a primary factor, your vital family bonds are utilized in the following mentally beneficial ways.
We actively integrate a strong family support system by involving the family at every phase of the mental health management training process. This is key, considering depression affects the majority of mental health sufferers, including nearly 9 percent of the population. This is mostly because they keep their self-esteem issues to themselves. It often takes a third party of friends, family, or loved ones to remind them of how important they are. This, in turn, boosts self-confidence and self-worth.
Many acquired mental health conditions revolve around the premise of not having a purpose in life. Our dedicated leadership team at Ridge RTC can help you discover your purpose. There’s no better way to find your purpose than to be surrounded by the company and advice of your loved ones. Approved locations provide the necessary environmental escape to think clearly. That coupled with deep family discussions can reestablish a personal purpose in life.
Family can be the greatest voice of reason when difficult mental health symptoms rear their ugly head. This helps many see the light jaded by an individual’s negative outlook on life and self-worth. We allow residents and families to have open-ended communication with loved ones at their convenience. All families are offered the same opportunities to be heavily involved in their child’s mental health management process.
Depression and mental health symptoms distract your mind in the most dangerous of ways. Quality family time and communication help you continually positively re-hone your focus. This process helps the mental health sufferer develop good thought habits to replace former negative inhibitions.
As alluded to regarding negative thoughts, family involvement helps instill a solid foundation to manage mental health symptoms alone. All thanks to the continual positive reinforcement from loved ones. What family says often sticks hard enough for mental health sufferers to recall in their darkest times. Such a loving influence is known to aid the redevelopment of positive mental impulse-controlled habits and fortitude.
What are the Benefits of Family Support in Teen RTC?
Openness with the ones who love you most has innumerable mental health benefits, including potential healing properties. The following benefits outline just a few of the many ways families make a tremendous contribution to mental health management.
When doctors open the line of communication between family members, it strengthens family bonds, directly impacting everyone’s mental health state. You’ll be surprised how improved family relationships can mean improved mental health. Unbeknownst to the individual, mental health discouragement often stems from faltering family relationships.
Integrating family into the mental health process helps the sufferer and the family understand each other on a deeper level. Individuals with mental health conditions are professionally enlightened on the details of their condition following assessment and encouraged to openly communicate with loved ones. Professionally-guided treatment helps the family gain a better insight into the toll and nature of mental health conditions. Most importantly, the family learns how to properly react to symptoms to garner a positive response. All-in-all openness is mutually beneficial for all parties involved.
A large part of overcoming mental health struggles is to acknowledge and resolve issues in the family’s past. Most loved ones don’t even realize how much of an impact past behavior, upbringing, and issues have on mental health. Clearing the air on any family issues can help the family heal old wounds together and improve most mental conditions. Perhaps the key to controlling your mental health condition symptoms is mending wounds from your family’s past.
It takes loved ones and mental health sufferers alike striving in one accord to overcome mental health struggles together. Shutting family members out divides that unity. The more open a family is with one another, the more unified they are. The more unified families are, the more they can help one another through any circumstance.
How Does Ridge RTC Encourage Family Involvement?
We encourage family integration in several ways because we believe family involvement is what makes managing mental health possible. The following family-integrated methods have been medically established as one of the most positive mental health management factors.
Clients at the Ridge have three, scheduled opportunities per week to speak with their family. Clients are only permitted to speak with individuals that have been preapproved by their family.
Having your child enrolled in our facility doesn’t prevent you from having the personal time you need with your teen. These personal visits are the chance to hear about your child’s experiences and thoughts of their time at our facility. Ask them questions and share your thoughts, concerns, and hopes, among other things to release the floodgates of open communication.
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Megan, now the Medical Director at Ridge RTC, is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with a rich history in medical and mental health services. Her journey includes six years as an Emergency Department Registered Nurse at Frisbie Memorial Hospital and a transformative tenure at Shortridge Academy. Starting as a student mentor at Shortridge in 2012, she climbed the ranks to become Residential Manager, a role that had her creating student trips and managing the residential environment. Before embarking on her medical career, Megan championed the cause of those with severe mental illness as a Case Manager at a community agency.