Our Approach vs. Residential Mental Health Treatment Centers

The benefits of residential-level treatment can be particularly profound when individuals need to immerse themselves in a supportive environment and focus all their energy on healing. Unlike conventional residential treatment centers, however, PCH focuses on tailoring treatment timelines to the client’s recovery while cultivating an environment that helps them prepare for real-world scenarios.

The way most residential mental health treatment centers bill for their programs makes it difficult to get insurance to cover the costs, and even if they do, the insurance companies generally dictate treatment timelines, which may be as short as a week or less. When that happens, individuals with deep-seated issues or trauma do not have the time to get to the root of their challenges, much less begin to heal in a way that translates to sustainable well-being when they return to the world. These shorter residential treatment timelines also feed into the stigma that mental issues are something to be “fixed” or “gotten rid of” as quickly as possible.

At PCH, we believe that only the clients should decide the right treatment timeline for their recoveries. We all heal and recover at our own rate, and imposing a time constraint on healing quickly becomes counterproductive, particularly when an individual is already struggling with anxiety or thoughts of hopelessness and depression. That’s why, unlike most residential treatment programs, our treatment programs with supportive housing don’t have fixed timelines, allowing each individual to heal at their own pace.

While our programs do have a minimum duration of four weeks, the average stay is 60 to 90 days. We’ve found that any less than four weeks doesn’t give our clients or our team enough time to start breaking down the barriers to recovery, including mismedication, misdiagnosis, stigmatization, and past clinical trauma. However, our clients are welcome to stay in our supportive housing program for as long as they need to overcome those barriers and heal in a meaningful way.

Practice for Real-World Scenarios

Most residential mental health facilities provide a static environment where all of the individual’s daily activities are contained. Individuals often eat, sleep, work, learn, and participate in therapy sessions all in the same building. One of the downsides with this approach is that even if individuals feel they’ve made progress in a clinical setting, they aren’t necessarily equipped to translate the new skills and behaviors they’ve learned into well-being in the real world.

At PCH, our supportive housing programs follow a real-world model where clients live in a supportive housing environment and then walk or are transported to our nearby treatment center. At the treatment center, they gain actionable insights by taking part in individual therapy and group programs, along with activities that promote holistic well-being. They can then translate and internalize what they learn at the treatment center by practicing new behaviors and skills in the safe, supportive environment of their residence house.

Our evidence-based supportive housing programs are about more than understanding how past traumatic events shape an individual’s mental well-being in the present. While that’s absolutely instrumental to recovery, our program also encourages clients to have fun, try new activities, and seek new forms of fulfillment. To achieve those goals, our supportive housing programs also provide clients with an opportunity to experiment with new activities, such as:

• Exercise
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Art and art therapy
• Knitting
• Music therapy
• Creative writing and poetry

By learning new skills and activities in a supportive residential environment, individuals can try things that they may otherwise not be exposed to and then build on those activities to aid in their journey as they transition back to their everyday lives.

What’s the Right Treatment Path for You?

If you or someone you care about feels like inpatient trauma treatment centers have underserved your needs in the past, we started PCH to help people like you. While residential treatment centers offer a range of benefits over outpatient and day programs, they aren’t necessarily equipped to handle high-acuity cases of severe mental distress. PCH is, and we adapt our approach to the individual needs of each client.

When you’re ready to have a conversation with a team of caring professionals to learn more about our treatment programs with supportive housing, give us a call today.