The Meadows Outpatient Program Is More Than An IOP

 

By David Anderson, The Meadows Executive Director

We often refer to The Meadows Outpatient Center as an “Intensive Outpatient Center,” or IOP...

….which it is.

However, in reality, the Meadows Outpatient Center is much more than what most people think of when they refer to an IOP. We like to think of our program as a COMPREHENSIVE outpatient program.

Let me explain…

What is an IOP?

There are many programs all around the country that call themselves IOP programs. These programs vary greatly in how they are set up; but, typically they only offer three, one-hour group therapy sessions per day, three days per week (i.e., nine hours total per week). And often group therapy is all that they offer— no individual therapy, no neurofeedback, no psychiatry, no trauma-sensitive yoga, no art therapy, no Somatic Experiencing, no EMDR, no acupuncture, etc.— Just nine hours per week of group therapy.

Now, compare that to The Meadows Outpatient Program which provides 18-20 hours of services and treatment per week. That is more than twice the amount of services provided in a typical IOP.

Each week, our patients may take advantage of:

• Four 3-hour groups. That’s 12 hours of group therapy each week.
• One hour of art therapy with a trauma/art therapist,
• One hour of trauma-sensitive yoga
• One to two hours of individual therapy per week (including somatic experiencing, EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, and expressive arts)
• A separate Family Recovery Group each Monday (just for family members),
• A weekly multi-family group,
• Private family therapy (as needed for couples or family),
• Two separate 1-hour appointments for Brainpaint Neurofeedback each week (typically with three different protocols during each hour),
• One hour of acupuncture each Friday,
• A one-hour Meadows-produced educational DVD (usually a Pia Mellody talk) in our state-of-the-art conference room on a high-definition big screen (with pizza!) on Fridays,
• Psychiatrist appointments (Typically one hour in the beginning of the program; then one to three follow-up appointments during the course of treatment), and
• Recently added: a once-per-month therapeutic drum circle.

Additionally, the Brain Spa is open at all times for patients to use Cranial Electro Stimulation (CES) machines. The Brain Spa has three relaxing chairs and one massage chair set up with studio quality headphones and iPod Nanos programmed with brain regulation programs (e.g., Hemi-sync binaural beats, Mozart Effect, Guided Imagery, meditation music, etc.)

Nationwide, the hours required for each level of care in behavioral health are…

• Residential/inpatient programs - 24/7 care
• Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHPs): Typically 30 hours per week of care,
• Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOPs): Typically plus/minus 9 hours per week of care.

So, with our 18 to 20 hours of care per week, The Meadows Outpatient program is actually something in-between a PHP and an IOP.

Additional Benefits of The Meadows Outpatient Center

It’s also important to note that The Meadows Comprehensive Outpatient program is now “in network” with both Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Humana. And, our wonderful Finance Team works hard to every to make the step-down to outpatient care affordable, regardless of the patient’s insurance provider.

Plus, the weather is beautiful all year in Scottsdale, Arizona making The Meadows Outpatient Center the ideal place to begin or continue your journey of recovery. Our safe and nurturing community and our expert staff help patients gain the courage they need to face difficult personal issues including grief and loss, heal from emotional trauma, and become accountable for their own feelings, behaviors, and recovery. Send us an email or call us at 866-913-5010 for more information.

Join Us for Mindful Mondays

Why do we struggle in life? That’s a question that many religions, philosophers, and scholars have tried to tackle for centuries. You’d be hard-pressed to find any human being who hasn’t experienced their fair share of pain and difficulty. It often comes in the form of trauma, abuse, neglect, break-ups, betrayals, disappointment, failures, illnesses, loss, and grief.

Regardless of the type or severity of their hardships, people typically find ways to survive. But, unfortunately, some of the ways we adapt our thoughts and behaviors in order to survive get in the way of our ability to thrive.

When we feel pain or discomfort, we tend to try to avoid it, suppress it, or repress it; or, we find some distraction through drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or any number of other substances and activities.

Mindfulness is about bringing unconditional, nonjudgmental attention to our experience in the present moment. Its aim is to help us learn how to tolerate, accept, and even appreciate our pain, and emotional experiences. Mindfulness work teaches us how to really show up in our lives without being constantly distracted by fears of fantasies and without wishing for things to be other than they are.

So, how do we go about this work? There is no one “right” way, but many people begin to cultivate mindfulness through the regular practice of meditation. Many experts believe that you can begin to notice changes in your moods and perceptions with as little as 10 minutes a day of meditation.
That’s why each Monday The Meadows will offer you the opportunity to meditate with one of our experts. Watch The Meadows Facebook page for a live, 10 to 15 minute, guided meditation every week.

 

Guided Meditation on Forgiving

Joyce Willis will be leading our first Mindful Monday session on Oct. 24 at 12:30 Mountain Standard Time (3:30 p.m. Eastern) Joyce is a therapist at The Meadows with 18 years of experience with mindfulness and meditation practices. She began her journey in 1998 when a doctor told her she needed to slow down after suffering a severe asthma attack. She realized that she had spent years trying to be superwoman, and didn’t quite know how to slow down. This led her to pick up Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living.

Since then, she has trained with Kabat-Zinn and other leaders in the field of mindfulness like Jack Kornfield and Ronald Siegel. Through her Mindful Monday sessions, she hopes to help people connect their emotional, spiritual, mindful, and physiological selves with compassion and respect.

 

Want More Mindfulness?

The Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows offers an incredible, transformational, 5-day workshop on mindfulness called Mind & Heart: A Mindful Path to Wholehearted Living. It is led by The Meadows Medical Director, Dr. Jon Caldwell, whose clinical practice is rooted in the timeless teaching and contemplative traditions of mindfulness meditation.

During the workshop. Dr. Caldwell leads participants through several enlightening presentations and experiential exercises focused on cultivating mindfulness and compassion. Ancient and scientifically-verified practices will be applied in unique ways to help heal past wounds. People with various levels of experience with mindfulness and meditation can benefit from the workshop.

All that is needed is a curious mind, a willing heart, and an intention to heal!
For more information on the Mind & Heart Workshop or on any of The Meadows personal growth workshops, please call 866-457-3202, or reach out online.

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The Meadows Intensive Outpatient Program Partners with Blue Cross Blue Shield

Two years ago, we opened the Meadows Outpatient Center in Scottsdale, Arizona with the goal of taking everything we’d learned throughout our 40 years of delivering world-class, quality treatment programs at The Meadows, and applying it to an outpatient setting.

Today, we are thrilled to announce that The Meadows Outpatient Center is now an in-network provider for all Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance carriers. Blue Cross Blue Shield is one of the largest managed care companies in the United States. By partnering with them, we can make the cutting-edge services and resources we offer through The Meadows IOP more accessible to more people than ever before.

The Meadows Outpatient Center offers comprehensive outpatient treatment programs for emotional trauma and related mental health issues like drug and alcohol addiction, mood disorders, personality disorders, and co-occurring disorders. There are also programs available that focus specifically on the needs of young adults (ages 18 – 26) with addiction and mental health issues, and men and women who are struggling with sex addiction.

Services at The Meadows Outpatient Center are based on the renowned Meadows Model for treating trauma and addiction. They include 12 hours of group therapy per week, individual counseling, psychiatry consultations, Neurofeedback, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, art therapy, trauma-sensitive yoga, acupuncture, family therapy, and yearlong aftercare.

"We are extremely proud of the quality and caliber of service offered at the Meadows Outpatient Center,” says Meadows Behavioral Healthcare CEO Sean Walsh. We truly feel that it is unlike any other outpatient program in the country. Our in-network relationship with Blue Cross Blue Shield is an exciting step which allows us to be a resource to a greater number of those in need."

The Meadows Outpatient Center is available to all patients with Blue Cross Blue Shield effective immediately. So please don’t hesitate to call one of our Intake Specialists at 866-356-9801 or chat with us online to learn more. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about our outpatient program and your Blue Cross Blue Shield benefits.

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Get in the Recovery Zone

By Aleah Johnson, Alumni Coordinator at The Meadows

It’s hard to believe we are already halfway through summer! This time of year can be a glorious one for some and stressful one for others. Many people have kids who are out of school, family trips and vacations, and longer days with an abundance of activities to take part in.

With the heating up of temperatures and the heating up of schedules, we must make the time to take extra care of our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. This is especially true for people in recovery.

The Recovery Zones

At The Meadows, we encourage working the process of recovery zones. You may find yourself sliding in out of each of these zones throughout your recovery, and that’s okay! Anytime you feel that you are getting off track, take the time to assess and re-enter any of the zones.

Stay in the Zone!

Recovery has its challenges, but so does everyday life - life is in session and we all know that some days get ahead of us. Sometimes, “trust the process” is easier said than done. However, we must not let that skew our recovery. Don't let one day throw you off track. It is important for us to stick to this path and stick to the journey.

Do what you can do to live a long and healthy life; this will help not only you, but also others in recovery. We have all spent too many past years being active in our lives but not actually living it with purpose; you are worthy of a life you love.

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What to Do When You Think Your Friend Has an Eating Disorder

Eating Disorder

Carrie noticed that her friend Lydia had lost a lot of weight lately. She was paying close attention to her diet and exercising every day. People at school were always complimenting her, even teachers and parents. “What’s your secret?” they’d often say. “I wish I could lose weight that quickly!”

At first, Carrie was happy for her friend too. But, then she started to notice some things that worried her. Lydia had slowly stopped hanging out with her. She didn’t sit with Carrie in the cafeteria for lunch anymore. In fact, she didn’t go the cafeteria at all. She said she wasn’t hungry and would rather study.

Every time Carrie asked Lydia to go to the mall, or to the movies, or just to hang out at her house, she said she couldn’t because she had to get her workout in. It seemed like she was always working out!

And, Carrie couldn’t talk to her about “normal” things anymore. All Lydia seemed to want to talk about were calories, the latest diet fads, and new exercise routines.

Lydia was also starting to look way too thin. All of her clothes hung loosely from her body; sometimes it even seemed like she was deliberately wearing bigger clothes to try to hide how thin she’d become.

One day in Health class, Carrie’s teacher brought up the topics of anorexia and bulimia during a lesson on nutrition. That’s when Carrie realized that her friend Lydia might be in serious danger.

How to Talk to Your Friend About Your Concerns

If the scenario above sounds at all familiar to you—whether your “friend” is a classmate, spouse, daughter, or niece—you may wonder what you should do to help. Here are some tips that may increase the likelihood that your efforts will be seen by your friend as the caring gestures that they are, and will convince her to seek eating disorder treatment.

First, prepare yourself with information:

• Know the signs of anorexia and bulimia so that you are acting out of clear information rather than uninformed suspicion.
• Learn about the medical and psychological consequences of eating disorders.
• Understand that eating disorders are complex. Recovery is not just a matter of will power.
• Learn what community and healthcare resources are available to help people with eating disorders.

Next, pick a non-stressful time to discuss your concerns with your friend:

• State your fears to your friend.
• Describe what you have observed. List evidence of the problem.
• Be compassionate; listen.
• Try to understand things from the other person’s perspective. Understand that people with eating disorders often make decisions based on their feelings rather than on facts and logic.
• Express your concerns about the person’s health and functioning, not just their weight.
• Indicate your conviction that the situation should at least be evaluated by a professional. If she is a teenager or adolescent encourage her to talk to her parents about the situation.
• Explain how you can help. If you are both teenagers, offer to go with her to talk to a parent, teacher or trusted adult. If you are both adults, you may be able to offer a referral, information, emotional support or financial support.
• If you and your friend are people of faith, consider praying together for her well-being and wisdom in her decisions.

Be ready to:

• End the conversation if it is going nowhere or if the person becomes upset. But, if possible, leave the door open for further conversations.
• Have patience: If rejected, try again later, explaining that you are coming back because you think the situation is serious.
• Respond to emergencies: If the person is throwing up several times per day, passing out, complaining of chest pain, or talking about suicide, get help for them immediately.
• If you and your friend are still in middle school or high school, be ready to reach out to a parent, teacher, or trusted adult and tell them about your concerns.

Things to avoid:
Here are some actions or words that could lead your friend to feel as though she is not being heard and reject your help.

• Don’t oversimplify. Avoid platitudes like, “Eating disorders are an addiction like alcoholism,” or “All you have to do is accept yourself as you are.”
• Don’t nag about eating or not eating, or spend time talking about food and weight.
• Don’t be judgmental; don’t say that what the person is doing is “sick,” “stupid,” or “self-destructive.”
• Don’t give advice about weight loss, exercise, or appearance.
• Don’t say, “I know how you feel.” Instead, you can demonstrate that you understand by paraphrasing what the person has said.
• Don’t feel obliged to agree with the person’s perspective or beliefs, even though you are making an effort to understand them.
• Don’t bring a group of people to confront the person.

Make Sure You Also Take Care of Yourself

Finally, think about ways to take care of yourself during this stressful time. Remember that you matter too, and that good boundaries will help protect your well-being as well as that of your friend.

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Definitely, don’t promise to keep the person’s behavior a secret. Eating disorders have the highest death rates of all mental illnesses, so there’s a good chance you might have to get other people involved in helping her.
• Don’t get over-involved. Know your limits. You are not a substitute for professional care.
• Find support for yourself. Talk to a counselor or healthcare professional. Attend a support group for family and friends of those with eating disorders.

By following these guidelines, you increase the chances that your desire to help your friend will lead to real change in his or her life. And you are more likely to preserve the friendship and your own balance in the process.

Reach Out to Remuda Ranch

In our safe and tranquil environment, Remuda Ranch at The Meadows offers specialized care for women and girls in all stages of eating disorder recovery. Our approach combines proven medical and clinically intensive treatment with life-skills training and experiential programs to help patients restore balance to their lives.

Representatives are available by phone at 866-390-5100 or online at www.remudaranch.com to answer questions regarding eating disorder treatment for themselves, a family member, or loved one. If your friend or her family needs someone to speak to, feel free to give them our contact information.

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