It’s now well established that when a teenager’s family is involved in their mental health treatment, it leads to better outcomes for both young people and their families. Family involvement might include family therapy, parent training, or family workshops. When families function better, young people recover quicker and see more lasting, positive changes.
When young people receive community-based (outpatient) treatment, families often live near the treatment space. This means that it’s relatively easy for families to attend family therapy and other interventions on a regular basis.
However, when a young person is in residential treatment, integrating family therapy can be more logistically challenging. Family members sometimes live hundreds of miles away and are only accessible through phone calls and online or by visiting the centre.
One way to effectively include families in a residential treatment program is through intensive days or weeks of residential family therapy. During residential family therapy, parents and other family members stay in the treatment space where their teenager is recovering. This enables families to receive in-person therapy sessions, both with and without the young person.
This blog explores some of the benefits of intensive residential therapy for parents and families.
Why Are Family Therapy and Other Interventions So Important?
Families usually play a key role in a young person’s recovery from mental illness. Effective family systems provide teenagers with the support they require to navigate and stay committed during challenging times. Families can also reinforce positive change while discouraging harmful behaviours.
On the other hand, difficult family dynamics can create a form of toxic stress that exacerbates young people’s mental health symptoms. Without a full understanding of a young person’s mental health, family members can also unintentionally enable problematic behaviours or feel unable to provide effective support.
Research shows that the level of family involvement in treatment is linked not only to a young person’s progress during treatment but also to their ability to adapt to everyday life once they leave a residential program. Family therapy and other interventions help both the young person and their family prepare for their return to life at home, building and practising the skills they need to create a supportive family environment that nurtures ongoing recovery.
Importantly, attending family therapy doesn’t mean that a young person’s mental health problems are the fault of their family. Instead, family members are seen as playing a valuable role in a young person’s recovery – but they require some support to gain the skills to do so.
How Can Families Be Involved in a Residential Treatment Program?
There are many different ways for families to be involved in a residential treatment program. Family involvement can be defined as any role or activity that allows families to have a meaningful input in or influence a young person’s treatment. Attending family therapy is only one part of family involvement: families may also play an active role in treatment planning, decisions, and follow-up care.
Two of the most established methods of family involvement in residential treatment are parent support groups and behavioural parent training. These are usually offered by phone, internet, or during family visits to a residential centre.
- Behavioural parent training focuses on teaching parenting skills like reinforcing positive behaviours and finding compromises. It uses techniques like instruction, modelling, and role-play.
- Parent support groups provide a diversity of support, including psychoeducation, family engagement in treatment planning, and guidance for the transition back to home life.
More recently, some treatment spaces have incorporated therapeutic letter writing into their programs. Letter writing between young people and family members can help families move through stages of change, build communication skills, slow down conversations, and repair interpersonal harm. It may include impact letters, accountability letters, and strength letters.
What Is Intensive Residential Family Therapy?
Despite the importance of family involvement in residential treatment programs, meaningfully integrating families into treatment can be difficult. It may be hard to arrange online or phone meetings when families are spread across different time zones. Frequent travel to and from a treatment centre can be tiring and expensive and parents may have to spend time away from their obligations and other loved ones.
Intensive residential family therapy offers the opportunity for parents to engage in their child’s treatment program and develop their own skills through in-person meetings and sessions. It avoids the costs of frequent travel to and from a treatment space and the disruption this can cause to daily life. Instead, parents stay at a treatment centre for a short amount of time (usually around one week) but engage in an intensity of treatment that facilitates meaningful and lasting change.
Intensive residential family therapy for parents may include:
- Parent skills training
- Psychoeducation
- Family systems therapy
- Family experiences
- Process groups
- Collaborative treatment planning
- Preparation for the transition back home
What Are the Benefits of Intensive Residential Family Therapy?
There are many benefits of intensive residential family therapy. Here are a few of them.
In-Person Treatment
Face-to-face conversations are, for most people, the most natural way to connect with others. In-person interactions enable types of non-verbal communication that bring people together and encourage mutual understanding.
Intensive residential family therapy facilitates in-person treatment sessions that encourage meaningful connections, promoting long-lasting change.
Sharing Experiences and Creating New Memories
It’s often difficult for someone to become well in the same environment they became unwell. This principle applies to families as well as individuals. It sometimes takes a new setting for families to break away from harmful or unhelpful dynamics (that may have been established over years) and build new ones.
Residential family therapy offers a change of environment where families explore different ways of being, relating to one another, and connecting across the family systems. By creating new memories together, families can incorporate new practices and perspectives into their daily lives.
Experiential Therapy and Family Experiences
Experiential therapy is based on the principle of learning by doing. Through shared experiences, families can build communication skills, empathy, and understanding. At the same time, individual family members can develop their own self-confidence and sense of authenticity.
Intensive family therapy weeks provide opportunities for shared family experiences that are not possible from a distance or during appointment-based visits. Families may go on outdoor adventures, partake in team-building exercises, or be creative together. During or after these activities, professional therapists may work with families to reflect on their experiences and consolidate positive change.
Building Routines Together
During intensive family therapy weeks, families can navigate some of the routines of everyday life alongside their young person. This might involve spending mealtimes, mornings, and evenings together.
Here, families can practice and reinforce skills they have learnt in therapy sessions with the support of mental health professionals, preparing them for life back at home. They may also learn how to manage some of the more challenging aspects of daily life (such as meal times for young people with eating disorders) in a supported therapeutic setting.
What Do Intensive Family Weeks at The Wave Clinic Involve?
During intensive family weeks, we invite family members to our treatment space for a week of experiences and therapeutic support. This includes a range of modalities, from family experiences to process groups, art therapy, and family systems therapy. Every program is tailored to each family’s unique needs.
We only have one family staying with The Wave at any time, so they can work with the entire therapeutic team that supports their young person. Over seven days, families have the opportunity to share the experiences of their child at The Wave and participate in everyday routines, therapy sessions, and activities together.
Our intensive family weeks look forward rather than backwards. Rather than focusing on the past, we create something new together. We work side by side to break free of unhelpful patterns and create memories and experiences together.
Contact Us
The Wave Clinic provides specialist mental health support for young people living with eating disorders, borderline personality disorder, and other mental health concerns. Contact us today to find out more.
