Residential Care

Care In A Home-Like Environment

Walden Place, Walden's residential program, provides an opportunity to simulate day-to-day living. The program provides recovering residents with a home-like setting where they can practice the coping skills they learn in therapy sessions, while they are in a structured, supervised program.

Residential living, as offered at Walden Place, begins to integrate the patient back into the community. Yet Walden Place is adjacent to our Alcott Center if a more intensive level of care is needed.

The residential program offers longer-term treatment for patients who have neither acute medical or psychiatric symptoms, but who need more treatment before they are ready to advance to Walden's partial hospitalization program or return to their home communities.

The focus of treatment is on providing a supportive environment where personal accountability and responsibility are emphasized. Residents learn and practice newly acquired skills by experiencing supervised activities outside of Walden. Living in a setting that simulates life outside of treatment, patients can better identify what triggers their disordered behavior and learn to cope with the challenges they will find most difficult to overcome when they return to life outside of Walden.

Who is served: Patients 17 years or older who have achieved medical stabilization, but who need an intensive, 24-hour care program. Patients are ready to practice cooking, grocery shopping and other tasks leading to greater independence.

Program Hours: 24-hour supervision is provided; the program day begins at 6:15 a.m. and ends at 11 p.m.

Goals:

• Develop healthy eating patterns in a non-institutional setting
• Gain insight into triggers that cause disordered behavior and the function of eating
• Develop skills for dealing with challenges
• Develop an individual recovery plan (life without an eating disorder)
• Advance to partial hospitalization or independent living
• Develop a plan to prevent relapses

Duration: Patients typically participate in residential care for four to twelve weeks.

Treatment

Treatment includes case management, evaluation and management of medication, nutrition counseling, and individual, family and group therapy. Residents are supervised throughout the day. Case managers conduct individual and family therapy, and establish and coordinate care with an outpatient team. Nutrition counseling focuses on education, individualized meal plans, food diversity and a system that encourages increasing flexibility over food choices, preparation and estimating amounts.

A Typical Day:

*Weekly outings to grocery stores or restaurants, or cooking
*Monthly Family & Friends Support Groups & Meals
*Weekly Support Groups for Family and Loved Ones