Why We Are A Twelve-Week Program
Mental health services are typically covered by insurance plans only during a crisis. It is often up to the client or the provider to prove to an insurance company that they need the service now. Once the crisis is over, insurance companies usually stop paying for services. This system of reimbursement emphasizes payment for crisis management without addressing the underlying needs of a client that contribute to the crisis behavior.
DBTeens NH aims to eliminate what Dialectical Behavior Therapy considers “Stage 1 behaviors”. This process includes decreasing life-threatening behaviors and increasing behavioral skills, as well as decreasing therapy-interfering behaviors and decreasing quality of life-interfering behaviors. We also begin addressing Stage 2 behaviors, which includes decreasing posttraumatic stress and chronic avoidance. We believe that without systematically targeting all of these areas, we are unable to make lasting change, and clients may revert to self-harm and suicidal behaviors when difficult experiences arise. We believe this pattern contributes to repeated psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts.
We address these targets with a DBT-adherent program. This means that we provide all of the required modalities of DBT, which include:
- Individual therapy
- Skills coaching
- Group skills training
- Consultation team to staff members
These modalities address Stage 1 and Stage 2 targets. We also provide group skills training and coaching to parents or adult partners. These services are offered to help adults develop better ways of supporting their teens, as well as to improve adult-youth communication. DBTeens NH also offers daily structured opportunities for practice (morning and evening meetings) as well as daily reminders for practice with methods to ensure compliance. These additional services are intended to both assist with skill generalization and work on Stage 2 targets of avoidance and posttraumatic stress behaviors. Our morning and evening meetings ensure accountability, improve motivation to push through the avoidance, and address negative patterns of behavior.
This is a long description of why we need a program with a beginning, middle and end. Because of this, we cannot accept reimbursement solely for urgent needs; we require commitment to fund our twelve-week program.