Treatment Overview

Cognitive Behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which clients are encouraged to overcome mental health issues by changing unhealthy or counter-productive thought processes, emotions, and behavior patterns. Though behavior change is one of the goals of cognitive therapy, the focus of this form of therapy is on the client’s cognition or mental processes and how unhealthy or counter-productive thought processes negatively impact life functioning.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy combines cognitive and behavior therapies in order to provide clients with positive and healthy mechanisms to handle painful emotions. The benefits of DBT are decreasing high-risk self-harm or suicidal behavior; decreasing behavior that interferes with the quality of life; decreasing symptoms related to trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression; enhancing self-respect; and assisting with goal setting. DBT is based on four core concepts:

• Mindfulness – Mindfulness is the capacity to pay attention to the present moment with awareness of emotions and thinking errors. This skill helps individuals accept and tolerate the powerful emotions they may feel when challenging their habits or exposing themselves to upsetting situations.
• Distress Tolerance – The goal is for the individual to become capable of calmly recognizing negative situations and their impact, rather than becoming overwhelmed or hiding from them. This allows the individual to make wise decisions about how and whether to take action, rather than falling into intense, desperate, or destructive emotional reactions.
• Emotion Regulation – Rather than becoming angry, overwhelmed, depressed, or anxious, the goal is for individuals to identify and label emotions; identify obstacles to changing emotions; reduce vulnerability to the emotional state; increase positive emotional events; and apply distress tolerance techniques.
• Interpersonal Effectiveness – Interpersonal response skills help the individual with assertiveness, coping with interpersonal conflict, and problem solving without damaging relationships or the person’s self-respect.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, mixed with commitment and behavior-change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. The core concept of ACT is that a person’s psychological suffering is usually caused by avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. ACT views the core of many problems to be due to the concepts represented in the acronym, FEAR:

• Fusion with your thoughts
• Evaluation of experience
• Avoidance of your experience
• Reason-giving for your behavior

The healthy alternative is to ACT:

• Accept your reactions and be present.
• Choose a valued direction.
• Take action.

EMDR has shown to be useful in assisting individuals in resolving traumatic experiences. When an individual is emotionally overwhelmed from a traumatic event, the brain cannot process information as it normally does and the emotions associated with that trauma become “stuck.” The memory, including the associated sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and emotions can feel as intense as when the traumatic event actually occurred. The act of remembering may trigger a “fight or flight” response. These memories can have a profoundly negative impact on the way an individual sees and relates to themselves and the world around them.

EMDR utilizes bilateral auditory, visual, and tactile stimulation (also known as Dual Attention Stimulation, or DAS) while thinking and talking about a traumatic memory. This process helps the individual resolve troubling emotions and cognitively reframe negative belief systems associated with the trauma. Subsequently, symptoms associated with PTSD such as nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, depression, feelings of powerlessness, and even suicidal thoughts are greatly diminished.

Family Systems Therapy is based in the belief that the family is a unique social system with its own structure and patterns of communication. These patterns are determined by many factors, including the parents’ beliefs and values, the personalities of all family members and the influence of the extended family (grandparents, aunts and uncles). As a result of these variables, each family develops its own unique personality, which is powerful and affects all family members.

Within the boundaries of the family system, patterns develop and family members behave in predictable ways. Any change in the emotional functioning of one member of the family is compensated for by changes in the emotional functioning of other members of the family unit. A Family Systems approach in therapy helps the entire family make positive changes in the family system that lead to a healthy equilibrium.

Psycho-educational instruction teaches about disorders, therapies, communication styles, and related issues through participative discussions. At Uinta Academy, the psycho-educational component involves teaching students about the nature of the challenges with which they are struggling. Psycho-educational instruction occurs individually in therapy and in daily group sessions with the other residents. When an individual is educated, they are empowered and prepared for a successful pursuit of long-term recovery and success.

Smart Recovery supports an individual in abstaining from addictive activities. It incorporates components of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Motivational Interviewing. The goals of Smart Recovery are:

• to help the individual build and maintain motivation to abstain from the addiction;
• to cope successfully with urges;
• to manage thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with the addictive patterns;
• and to live a balanced life.

Tools utilized by the therapist in Smart Recovery include Cost/Benefit Analysis, Change Plan Worksheet, Hierarchy of Values, ABCs of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Destructive Imagery and Self-talk Awareness and Refusal Method, and Brainstorming.

Uinta Academy incorporates a number of experiential therapy approaches into the treatment process, including ropes course participation, recreational therapy, horticultural therapy, and equine assisted psychotherapy.

Experiential Therapy includes a range of action and movement based forms of psychotherapy and uses activities such as outdoor activities, expressive arts, animal-assisted experiences, and trust-based activities. For individuals who have already participated in more traditional forms of psychotherapy (primarily talk therapy in an office setting), experiential therapy can be particularly effective due to its ability to take the individual’s focus off the therapy itself and encourage them to function “in the moment.”

During experiential therapy sessions, an individual has the opportunity to experience successes, identify obstacles, develop improved self-esteem and take greater responsibility for their actions. After the activity, the individual can process their emotions and receive specific feedback related to their decisions, actions, and reactions.