Some clients with significant mental health challenges benefit from regular and more intensive treatment than weekly or biweekly counseling provides. Sometimes the clients are served best by several days a week or more of treatment each week. For adults and adolescents with those needs, Canvas Health offers Adult Day Treatment, Group Therapy, and Adolescent Day Treatment in our Therapeutic Learning Center.
Adult Day Treatment
Adult Day Treatment takes place in groups of 8 to 12 people for 3 ½ hours, meeting 3 to 4 times per week. Treatment typically ranges from 12 to 20 weeks, with most transitioning into aftercare groups for a minimum of 4 months.
Canvas Health offers two different types of treatment:
- Connections– This treatment focuses on teaching skills to cope with mental health symptoms and lifestyle changes to support wellness. Illness management and recovery curriculum is used as well as support and validation. The program utilizes cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psycho education, and expressive therapies to teach and practice coping skills and wellness/lifestyle changes for managing impact of mental illness.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) – DBT is an evidence-based comprehensive cognitive-behavioral treatment that emphasizes mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness and distress tolerance. DBT is helpful for clients struggling with suicidal thoughts or other self-damaging behavior.
Adult Group Therapy
Adult therapy groups serve individuals who will benefit from ongoing group support for mental health challenges. Canvas Health offers a variety of outpatient group including: Symptom Management, DBT Skill Building, and coping skills along with Career Wellness and Success. Groups are available multiple days per week in 60 to 90 minute sessions.
Therapeutic Learning Center (Adolescents)
Adolescent day treatment services at Canvas Health offer daily therapeutic environment for children ages 11 to 17 with mental health needs that impact learning and school attendance. The program collaborates with clients’ family and school to build the appropriate skills for the child’s successful return to their community school. Special educational needs and other supports including medication management, individual, group and family therapy are built into treatment. Children attend this program daily during normal school hours at Canvas Health’s Oakdale location, including summer sessions, and are referred by school districts.
Impact
One adult client’s story from the pandemic shows the power of more intensive treatment tailored to the client:
A client who recently completed day treatment has learned ways to successfully manage her depression and minimize conflict at home. She struggled with significant mental health symptoms related to bipolar disorder, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder. She engaged consistently in day treatment interventions and practiced skills frequently, both when symptoms were elevated and as daily practice. She was able to reflect internally on how she was stuck in an ineffective series of cycles. Her daily reports included noticing skill use was increasingly effective and seeing her family be more skillful, in part, through her role modeling. At the end of the program, the client reported that day treatment “taught me how to love myself again.”
Each year, Canvas Health’s day treatment programs serve 200 individuals and help them gain greater control over their lives. For people who need more help developing skills to cope with their mental health symptoms, day treatment can be an important step in the road to control over their lives.