Get to Know Our Partial Hospitalization Program or PHP Program
The Partial Hospitalization Program has been designed around adolescent clients who are very unstable and are making significantly poor choices with drugs/alcohol coupled with mental health problems like depression or anxiety. Clients are typically cycling from home to jail to a short stay at a psychiatric hospital for drug dependence, theft, and other unsafe behaviors. Many of our clients have been expelled from school, live between divorced parents, are victims of traumatic events and often run away from life’s pressures. Clients have been placed in multiple treatment settings from wilderness and boot camps, to boarding schools. Parents and clients are at their “wits end.”
Our PHP day program includes a minimum of 4 hours of therapy daily, a weekly visit with a psychiatrist and or his nurse practitioner, weekly individual therapy, and the opportunity to complete school work during program hours supervised by our educator. While group therapy is the primary framework, each adolescent also receives weekly individual counseling and family therapy. The combination of group, individual and family therapy provides the foundation for the process of uncovering and addressing the underlying issues which empowers movement towards healing.
Our PHP program is a step down level of care for a teen exiting residential treatment or inpatient hospitalization. This level of care may also prevent the client’s symptoms from exacerbating to the point of needing further inpatient treatment.
Delivering the Gold Standard in PHP
The partial day treatment component of Waterford Counseling consists of 4 clinical hours a day, five days a week, for approximately 60 days. The number of participants does not exceed 20 in any location, with the group being broken down into manageable groups from 4 to 5. This day program consistently supports these participants through individualized guidance in coping with psychiatric and/or behavioral problems and other factors that have necessitated the need for outpatient placement in lieu of a higher level of residential treatment.
The overall cognitive aspect of the Therapeutic Day Treatment Program consists of teaching real-life problem-solving skills to be consistently implemented upon program discharge. Crisis situations or conflicted relationships are anticipated, and specific treatment plans will be developed for each client.
We identify cognitive errors and rehearse rational behavioral strategies. Assertiveness, problem solving, anger management, anxiety management, and similar skills training will take place through self-examination, disputing irrational ideas, and teaching coping skills.
