Family involvement can improve mental health treatment outcomes by boosting attendance and helping teens complete treatment. Research finds that each family therapy session attended is associated with a 1.4-fold increase in the odds of completing treatment. Your role in your child’s treatment can create a strong foundation for their entire healing journey.

Why Is Family Participation Important for Teen Mental Health?

Family participation is important for teen mental health because it lowers the chances of dropping out of treatment, reinforces healthy coping skills in their daily lives, and helps create a more stable home. Structured family therapy, along with active participation in your teen’s treatment, can help create a more consistent environment where your teen can open up more easily and feel understood.

This collaborative approach can also help improve communication and reinforce the strategies your teen learns in therapy within your own family dynamic.

Benefits of a Unified Family Approach

There are several benefits of a family approach in treatment, including helping your teen develop greater emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness, with skills reinforced by your family working together. Main benefits include:

Families can help keep teens committed to their care plan
Teens can use new coping skills at home while family members help practice them
Adults can agree on consistent rules and supervision for their teen
Parents can learn to validate their child’s feelings
Families can start normalizing mental health discussions as part of overall wellness

Collaborating in treatment can help build a renewed sense of hope and resilience for your teen as well as your entire family.

How Does Hillside® Support Family-Centered Treatment?

Hillside® takes a specialized approach to support family-centered treatment, involving caregivers and parents directly in the therapeutic process. Our clinicians provide behavioral and mental health services like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), outpatient care, intensive in-home therapy, day treatment, and campus-style residential treatment. Through these services, we help families understand their teen’s care plan, validate their teen’s feelings, reinforce skills at home and navigate challenges together. Weekly family therapy is an important part of treatment at all levels of care. In addition to family therapy, Hillside offers weekly caregivers DBT Skills group and every other week Family Psychoeducation Groups via Zoom for all families within out treatment continuum.

We recognize the importance of family participation in successful outcomes and partner with you in our treatment programs to help your teen achieve positive change.

Turn to Hillside® for Healing and Hope

At Hillside®, our campus-style residential program, partial hospitalization program, and intensive outpatient services in Metro Atlanta can help support your teen’s healing journey. We understand the difficulties families face when children struggle with mental health, and we are here to help.

Contact us today to learn more about our services and get started on this journey to a brighter future for your family.