Skipping Steps in Treatment
When someone goes straight from a residential level of care to an outpatient level of care, often that patient falls flat on their face. To go from the highest level of supervision and structure to the lowest level of supervision and structure provides too much opportunity for someone just coming out of treatment to backslide. Another word for backslide is relapse.
Far too often families will contact me for a second, third, or seventh attempt at treatment. After gathering all the information from their previous treatment attempts, I learn about the short residential stays and immediate recommendations (or lack thereof) to step-down to sober living. In looking more closely, a lot of the treatment programs they participated in were focused on the addition and treated the mental health like it was an afterthought. Unfortunately, this is all-to-common even for programs that identify themselves as “dual-diagnosis.” Families need a Therapeutic Placement Consultant more than they ever realized!
To ensure that, this time in hiring a Consultant that it really “sticks,” we make sure that we don’t skip steps through the continuum. Residential to extended care, and extended care to sober living. No matter how stellar your young adult is coming across as changed in treatment, they need to go through each of these steps. Period. With extended care being the often skipped step, it is also the most critical in ensure lasting change!
If your adult child is currently in a residential treatment program and they are pushing for sober living, you can blow the whistle. Going straight to sober living is a set-up for failure. This is not an exercise in sobriety, but it is a lifestyle change that we often refer to as “recovery.” If finances are a concern, it is more important than even to make sure you are not skipping steps during the first stint in treatment.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
Whatever you do, Don't hit Delete!
Whatever you do, do not hit delete. This message is brought you to courtesy of all those who wish they had been given this advice! This topic is specifically regarding texting or social media and is approved by your future attorney. As a parent, if you have not talked with your college kid yet about this, the time to talk to them about it is now.
We all know that when something ends up in the cloud, it can forever be accessed. Hitting delete does nothing. If you do not delete though, it provides you with all the information you may need in a future case. Evidence to prove you were innocent, or evidence to be used against a plaintiff. A college student may not think about the long-term consequence of hitting delete, and in the moment just want that person or those texts to disappear. Tell your kid, “don’t delete!”
This can be extremely valuable information in regard to a Title IX allegation on campus. No one thinks about or wants to go through a Title IX allegation and yet it is happening on college campuses across the nation, daily. Do not delete social media connections. Do not delete any screenshots. Do not delete any texts. Tell your kid to go ahead and block someone temporarily so that they aren’t harassed, however they need to save all the tech exchanges that exist. It could be the difference in being innocent and proven guilty, on or off-campus.
This also relates to revenge porn. Not sure what that is, read more about it here. Whether you kid is the one posting, or they are the target of someone sharing explicit content without the consent of your kid. All you want to do is protect your kid! Pull them from college immediately if it means life or death for your adult child. And during this process, make sure that they do not hit delete, as much as they want to erase that person, or those people, from their memory in order to move on.
In talking about this with your college student, they will most likely think you are nuts for discussing this. But for any parent who is navigating any allegation with their adult child, they wished they’d thought about this sooner. Do yourself and your kid a favor and considering talking about the importance of not hitting delete.
If you find yourself dealing with on-campus allegations, it’s important to lawyer up. You need to find an Attorney who knows how to successfully navigate the higher education judicial systems. Additionally, think about the mental health of your young adult. Most likely they are experiencing a civil death. It’s important to get them removed from the college campus and into a safe environment for them to begin to heal. Hire a professional to help you and your college student navigate this process.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
When to Return to College after Treatment
Often parents are quick to talk timeline - getting their adult child back into college. If they took a break from college to seek treatment, the pressure of returning to school to ensure they do not fall behind their peers can feel crushing. College is not going anywhere, and it will certainly be there when the young adult is healthy enough to return. But how do you know when it is time? That is a great question we want to explore.
To make sure it is clearly stated, treatment is not a quick fix. Whether we are talking about mental health, substance abuse, or both, it is important to mention that it takes awhile to for the mind and body to heal. Although the young adult or parents may be beyond eager to get them back onto campus, doing it prematurely invites failure. If the young adult is driving the return to college, the parent needs to listen to the mental health professionals in the recommended timeline. By holding the boundary of telling them they cannot go back to college, it forces the young adult to slow down. This allows them to build the strength and resilience needed to be successful when returning to campus.
Stability in recovery takes time. The stabilization period can be between three to six months. From the addiction treatment lens, that will encompass three months in a residential level of care, and three subsequent months starting off in extended care. From a mental health recovery lens, that encompasses three months in a residential level of care, and then three subsequent months starting off in a step-down or transitional level of mental health care. Notice that neither of these options mention a drop-off in care or returning immediately to campus with outpatient services. Why? Because they do not work. It is like going straight from learning to swim with floaties in the shallow end to immediately diving off the deep-end unsupervised. It is too much, too soon.
Another way to identify if your loved one is ready to return to college is if they are too ill to volunteer or have a job. During their extended care or transitional care placement, if they are still struggling to participate in that capacity there is no way they would be able to successfully complete college coursework. With the start of each passing semester and the ability to watch their peers having the time of their life on social media, it will pull hard on the heartstrings to get the young person back on campus. Post addiction treatment, returning to the same campus with the same friends still around opens the door to relapse. Looking at transferring and finding a collegiate recovery program could be the difference between sobriety and recovery.
Lastly, for chronic mental health, it can’t be said enough that taking time away from college takes precedence over achieving the college diploma before the age of 21. If your loved one is diagnosed Bipolar and just experienced their first manic episode, the next twelve months will be filled with a ton of ups and downs. Between stabilization, medication, therapy, and learning to live with a lifelong diagnosis, this is not an ideal time to be in college. Show support for your adult child by letting them know that college will be there when they are healthy enough to show up.
No timeline will be the same for a young adult. Regardless, it’s safe to say that a minimum of six months is necessary between leaving college and getting treatment and then returning to campus. The ideal separation includes a full twelve months through a continuum of care. If you push the college timeline, you jeopardize the health of your adult child. Adding to their mental health by factoring in acute stress related to school failure will only stretch out the recovery process. Think about the mental health over timeline for college diploma.
To navigate this process of knowing where to look for stabilization, or where to enroll for extended care, hire a professional. This is not a journey you want to navigate alone, and you will want someone in your corner to ensure you understand the “why” behind the clinical recommendations and timeline.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.