All About Holistic Residential Center
Facing the prospect of checking in to a residential treatment center for depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, or a similar disorder is nothing to be ashamed of. Originally, psychiatric hospitals were places where people who didn’t fit in or were considered mentally unstable were locked away and simply forgotten about. In the 1940s and 1950s, the poor treatment received by patients in mental hospitals were exposed for the first time, and efforts to reform began. More community-based mental health centers evolved, and the concept of a rehabilitation center emerged for the first time.
What is Holistic Residential Treatment?
From a holistic point of view, residential treatment and rehabilitation centers have come a long way, but mainstream centers still have a long way to go. Centers such as ours, a holistic treatment center with Residential option in Southern California, hold to the philosophy that today’s philosophy on treating mental illness has led us too far into simply medicating patients without treating the underlying causes of mental disorders. As a result, big drug companies make plenty of money, and an entire generation of people are approaching the challenges in their life and in their mind with the numbed-out feeling of too many anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications, and other mood-changing drugs.
These drugs are powerful pharmaceuticals, and we don’t yet know the long-term effects of them. Furthermore, drugs do not solve the problem of mental illness. They certainly have their place in the world of mental health; many people find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications give them the reprieve they need to get back on their feet.
A residential treatment center with a holistic approach, however, believes in a minimal use of mood-changing drugs. Instead, at places like ours, the emphasis is on therapy, and might even include relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and Tai Chi.
Why Residential Treatment?
Some patients can treat their depression, anxiety, or personality disorder issues successfully using outpatient therapy alone. Not everyone can treat their mental illness successfully this way, however. For some individuals, no matter how much therapy they receive, it seems as if they are always slipping back into old patterns of negative, self-destructive behavior.
For these individuals, an inpatient model might help them break free of the negative patterns in a way that outpatient therapy cannot. Inpatient facilities offer a structure and an escape from the patient’s normal environment and routines that enable them to delve more deeply into the underlying issues behind their disorder.
At a holistic treatment center such as ours, therapists focus much less on psychiatric labels and heavy medications, and instead give patients a chance to explore their core issues in a safe, open, and comfortable environment. Individual counseling and group therapy is combined with programs like art and music therapy, physical fitness, healthy eating, massage, and acupuncture. This holistic model is more than an alternative to traditional residential treatment; places like ours are the vanguard in the next step for the natural evolution of mental health facilities.”
