Adolescent IOP

An adolescent intensive outpatient program, or adolescent IOP, is an outpatient treatment for teens that helps them break free from substance abuse, harmful behaviors, or mental health concerns. Adolescence is often the first time people experiment with drugs or alcohol or find themselves struggling with mental health. It also marks a critical period where lasting change can occur.

Desert Cove Recovery’s adolescent intensive outpatient program follows a full-spectrum behavioral health model. This means that our team is prepared to help adolescents overcome any challenge they’re having in life — whether that be a formal mental health diagnosis or not. We understand how difficult the period of adolescence can be, and our team is here to help.

Behavioral health programming is about more than simply resolving symptoms or changing problematic behavior. It’s about helping adolescents with every aspect of their lives. This means assisting teens to make positive lifestyle changes, learn healthier ways of dealing with their challenges, and overcome barriers that get in their way.

Overcoming issues such as addiction and mental health is never easy. But by helping your child or loved one during this critical developmental stage, you can help them pave the way toward a lifetime of better mental health.

Key Components

Desert Cove Recovery’s adolescent treatment plans have been carefully designed to provide all the services your teen needs to achieve a lasting and worthwhile recovery. Effective treatment of substance use and mental health disorders requires an integrated and personalized approach, which includes components such as:

Accurate Assessment

For any treatment to be effective, the first step is always accurate assessment and diagnosis.1 At Desert Cove Recovery, assessment extends beyond merely identifying a mental health condition and into understanding the environment and context that may be contributing to mental health problems. This includes:

  • Assessing the severity of symptoms
  • Determining what substances are used, in what quantities, and the frequency of use
  • Identifying any underlying or co-occurring mental health conditions
  • Recognizing any interpersonal challenges
  • Identifying any potential barriers to care
  • Understanding familial, cultural, or social contexts that influence behavior

Assessment also determines whether the level of care offered at adolescent IOP suits your child. Different levels of care are catered to people with different levels of challenges. If IOP isn’t the right level of care, the assessment may lead to a referral to higher levels of care, such as partial hospital programs or residential treatment.

Targeted Treatment Options

With an accurate assessment in hand, our team can determine which treatment options will best help your teen overcome their mental health or substance use challenges. Different styles of therapy, treatment, or interventions have different strengths — and choosing a targeted treatment program ensures positive outcomes.

Our team has several different specializations and treatment modalities to fit the unique needs of our clients, including:

  • Cognitive behavior therapy
  • Individual therapy
  • Group therapy
  • Medication-assisted treatment
  • Motivational interviewing
  • Twelve-step facilitation
  • Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy
  • Dialectical behavior therapy

These treatment options can dramatically reduce the symptoms of mental health challenges or substance use disorders. They can also uncover the root causes of these disorders and help adolescents achieve sustainable recovery.

Individualized Treatment Plans

Crucial to effective adolescent treatment is individualizing treatment plans to each client’s unique needs. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to recovery, and as such, no two treatment plans at Desert Cove Recovery are the same.

By determining the needs, preferences, and challenges each client experiences, we can custom-tailor treatment plans and interventions to help them achieve their goals and reduce the challenges they face with common mental health concerns.

Family Collaboration

Family plays a vital role in the treatment of adolescent substance use or mental health challenges. Not only does family collaboration help families repair damaged relationships and work through past struggles, but family therapy sessions have frequently been identified as the most effective at helping adolescents achieve recovery.2

Desert Cove Recovery places a high value on family involvement in treatment and keeps open lines of communication with family members who want to track their teen’s progress.

Structure of Adolescent IOP

An adolescent intensive outpatient program (IOP) is designed to fit around your teenager’s life rather than replace it. This means that your teen can continue going to school, living at home, and pursuing athletic or creative activities that are important to them.

The program is run after school hours, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. How often your teen attends treatment per week is determined by the level of care required for treatment to be successful. Adolescent IOP supports flexibility with your family’s unique needs and preferences.

Program Goals

Adolescent IOP has multiple goals. While sobriety is always the primary target, building outpatient services that support mental health, create healthy support networks, and provide tools for maintaining recovery for years to come are all critical components of long-term success.

Supporting Sobriety

Achieving and maintaining sobriety is the primary purpose of outpatient therapy. Our team uses multiple evidence-based treatment options to help adolescents recognize their substance use patterns, drill down to the root causes of addiction, and find healthy and productive alternatives to substance use.

Strengthening Support Networks

Social support is the backbone of adolescent treatment. Teenagers are wired for social connection and social learning.3 Adolescent IOP offers several strategies to cultivate healthy and durable support networks to keep adolescents working toward their mental health goals.

Notably, these support networks include both peers and family members. By strengthening both sides of this equation, adolescents can find the social support they need to achieve sobriety and work through any mental health challenges, now or in the future.

Improving Wellbeing

Adolescent IOP is about much more than sobriety. To create a recovery that truly lasts, adolescents need extensive education and preparation for the mental health challenges that frequently occur in the day-to-day life of adolescence and into adulthood.

This means that treatment is about more than just resisting cravings. We teach our clients to cope with stress, regulate emotions, find their sense of purpose, and create healthy and sustainable relationship skills.

By focusing on holistic mental health rather than attempting to solve a single problem in isolation, we can provide our clients with a solid foundation of recovery that can support them for the rest of their lives.

Contact Desert Cove Recovery Today

To get your teen started with adolescent IOP, reach out to Desert Cove Recovery today by calling (844) 235-2768 to speak to one of our addiction and mental health experts. Alternatively, you can fill out our confidential online contact form for more information.

Making the decision to start treatment is never easy. But your teenager can achieve recovery from substance use, provided they get the evidence-based treatment they need from a team of compassionate mental health providers.

Sources:

[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/co-occurring-disorders
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477300/
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acer.13984

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