Therapy Settings
If you observe your middle schooler or college student struggle with anxiety or OCD, then therapy will help them with their day-to-day symptoms and struggles.
Yet, how do you know which therapeutic setting matches your teen or young adult’s needs?
Discover more about the various therapy setting options below.
1. Individual Therapy
Is your adolescent reluctant, shy, reserved, or private in nature? Has your college student revealed that they suffer anxiety at school, but then avoids details when asked?
Perhaps they want and need to discuss their issues, but are not comfortable discussing them with friends or parents. Individual therapy may be the solution.
Individual therapy is what it purports to be. One teenager or young adult meets with one therapist to discuss their various mental health struggles in a safe, private, and confidential setting.
Opening up emotionally to someone can prove difficult, but with a therapist’s training, assistance and compassion, adolescents and young adults will soon feel comfortable discussing their fears, symptoms and emotions in a confidential setting. Confidentiality matters as it is likely that the teen may feel shame or embarrassment over their symptoms.
One-on-one therapy allows for a bond to grow between teenagers or young adults and their therapists. As the bond develops and deepens, they soon learn to trust their therapist and proactively seek help for their own circumstance. The therapist can then developed a personalized treatment plan to address their specific situation.
2. Group Therapy
Group therapy allows a variety of like-minded people to meet together to discuss their specific mental health struggles.
Each group therapy session is typically tailored around a specific mental health condition or symptom that all the participants share.
If your child feels lonely, has low self-esteem or isolated from their peers over their symptoms, group therapy is a good solution. When teenagers and young adults learn that they are not unique and are not the not only one suffering from their fears and behaviours, it tremendously reduces feelings of isolation and shame.
Group therapy also offers the opportunity to form friendships with people who share similar struggles, something often lacking among anxious teenagers and young adults. Factors affecting group therapy include meeting times, group sizes, and the topic to be discussed. Understanding what your child needs will help determine the appropriate group therapy setting.
Frequently, parents find that a combination of individual and group therapy tends to be the most effective pathway to recovery. These are often called Intensive Day Programs.
3. Intensive Day Program
As mentioned above, often individual or group therapy are good beginning points, however, many teens and young adults may need a combination of both individual and group therapy in order to fully recover.
A good intensive program will include both individual and group therapy in the same day. As the deep bond is formed in one-on-one therapy, the therapist begins a customized treatment plan for each individual to work on the behaviors and thought patterns that need addressing.
As the participant begins to heal personally, the group therapy allows them the opportunity to speak with peers who share their issues. They no longer need to feel alone. Feelings of shame and isolation are reduced. Newfound friendships are formed where there were none before.
Intensive Day Programs are extremely effective. Your teen or young adult will go to the location of the Program and spend several hours a day participating in both individual and group therapy and return home afterward to continue their lives in their typical fashion. Both school and social interactions will improve.
4. In-Home Therapy
In-home therapy is a type of individual therapy which takes place in a teenager’s or young adult’s home rather than in a professional’s office or outside facility.
In-home therapy is typically one-one-one and usually reserved for teenagers and young adults who can no longer leave the house, typically labelled agoraphobia. The severity of this condition will require a therapist to come to your home and treat the child until they are able to return to normal comings and goings.
Get Therapy Treatment for Your Teenager
If your teenager struggles with symptoms of anxiety and/or OCD, remember, they do not have to feel isolated, ashamed or fearful. Nor do you, as a parent, need to feel helpless.
Instead, families can turn to Anxiety Institute. Anxiety Institute’s sole focus is on providing reliable therapy treatment programs for teenagers and young adults, including individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, and day programs. Anxiety Institute will help determine what your teen or young adult’s needs are, and help you select the most appropriate setting and treatment plans. Once a setting has been established, all our treatment plans are tailored and customized toward your child and family’s situations.
Please contact us today to discuss your teenager’s needs, and we can help them choose the best therapy setting for them.
“My personal knowledge and experience of anxiety and fear, as a victim and as a conqueror, has gifted me the valuable asset of emotional intelligence. Knowledge and experience that will give me the empathy to connect with others and the grit to overcome adversity.”