Therapy
The clinical services provided by in-house professional staff are core elements of treatment for each resident at Island View. A carefully selected group of professionals with masters or doctoral degrees provide individual, group and family therapy. Recognizing that each resident is unique, Island View customizes an individual treatment plan for each youth. These treatment elements help residents develop communication and relationship skills, strengthen personal identity and foster pro-social attitudes and behaviors.
Individual Therapy is a regularly scheduled formalized psychotherapeutic session held at least once per week. Individual psychotherapy focuses on improving the overall level of adaptive functioning in the areas of reality testing, behavior, emotional expression, and interpersonal relationships. In addition, individual therapy takes on significant value in the resolution of issues and concerns that the resident feels ill-prepared to take to the group session or that are of such a private nature that discussion in a group format would be clinically contraindicated.
Group Therapy utilizing a Positive Peer Culture format is a formal psychotherapeutic session held in a small group format two to three times per week, while therapist driven Process and Problem Solving Groups are held weekly. Reasons for increased group therapy over individual therapy are based on the clinical literature that shows that group therapy is often more effective with adolescents than individual therapy. This model assists residents in realizing the goals and objectives set by treatment team members, residents and families. In the group, residents encourage each other’s positive behaviors and confront negative and self-defeating ones. Such peer feedback is often far more powerful than the expert opinion of a professional, well-meaning parent or other well-meaning adult.
Family Therapy is provided by the resident’s primary therapist and is an integral part of the resident’s comprehensive treatment. The road leading to residential placement of a teenager is often paved with pain, disappointment, fear, guilt and feelings of helplessness. For that reason, residential treatment does not only involve the child but his or her family in the process of change. Thus, all residents and their families are involved in weekly family therapy either at the Center, via conference telephone calls, or coordinated by the Center in the resident’s home community. Quarterly Parent Seminars are hosted on the Island View campus with regional Parent Seminars offered on a regular basis in different areas around the country.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
At any given time, about one third of the coed population at Island View are enrolled in a distinct program which has been developed to incorporate DBT principles and practices into the daily routine. DBT has been found to be highly effective in dealing with the emotional chaos experienced by many adolescents. Utilizing formal skill building groups facilitated by nationally trained clinicians in concert with milieu programming, individual therapy, and focused assignments such as ongoing self analysis of behavior and “mindfulness” exercises, residents are equipped with a personalized array of skills by which to become highly effective problems solvers who can transfer these skills into lifelong success.
