Laurel Hill Inn

Laurel Hill Inn Treatment Programs are highly structured and highly experiential. Treatment plans are individualized for each client we treat. We offer a full continuum of care including residential, day and evening treatment programs. Our programs are located in family neighborhoods and are offered in non-institutional homelike settings. Each treatment group is limited to ten clients.

Choosing the right program to treat the causes and symptoms of one’s eating disorder is a difficult decision. The greatest challenge for a family or loved one seeking help is to find a program that can meet the unique needs of the individual and provide that individual with the best possible chance for recovery.

Rich and comprehensive programming enables the women we treat to acquire effective coping skills. These skills as well as intensive clinical work provide a maximum opportunity for women seeking recovery to live a healthier and more satisfying lifestyle.

Following is an outline of how Laurel Hill Inn deploys its clinical personnel at our residential level of care. Residential treatment is the most intensive level of treatment we offer and is therefore our most intensively staffed level of care.

Individual Therapist

Our doctoral level individual therapist meets twice weekly with each client. During these collaborative sessions, the therapy focuses on gaining an understanding of the function of the client’s eating disorder behaviors. By doing so, the client learns how those behaviors have affected her life. Therapy may address other issues that affect the clients’ daily life such as anxiety disorders, body dysmorphia, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and past traumas. Individual therapy occurs in the context of a cognitive behavioral framework. It may also incorporate other theoretical approaches as needed.

In addition to individual therapy, our therapist facilitates a weekly cognitive behavioral group. Clients learn how to make changes to their current way of thinking, target dysfunctional eating disordered behavior, address anxiety, and understand how the roles that guilt and shame play out in their entrenched eating disorder symptoms.

Apart from the facilitation of a weekly cognitive behavioral therapy group, individual therapy is the only role that this clinician performs.

Nutritionist

Our nutritionist is a Registered Dietician who meets with each client in individual sessions once or twice per week depending upon each client’s needs. She either directly facilitates or supervises the facilitation of groups on healthy eating, menu planning, food portioning, cooking and our weekly group restaurant outing. Our nutritionist also takes a small group of clients to a local salad bar on a weekly basis in order to help clients practice portioning their food in a public setting. While clients are encouraged to participate in all skill teaching and experiential groups as soon as possible, there are sometimes activities in which a client may not feel quite ready to participate immediately after her admission.

Our nutritionist assists each client with menu planning and depending upon a client’s medical condition and overall readiness, approves each client’s weekly meal plan. She guides and supports clients in increasing their food choices and helps them to experiment with what they consider to be their “risk foods”. Through the educational and experiential process, she challenges each client’s entrenched eating disorder regimen to help the client change her relationship with food in a healthy way.

Case Managers

The goal of the case manager at Laurel Hill Inn is to help her assigned clients obtain maximum benefit throughout the treatment process. With this goal in mind, the case manager guides the establishment of treatment goals and monitors each client’s progress toward those goals. She helps her clients acquire and practice effective coping skills and responds to questions and concerns about their treatment plans.

Case managers at Laurel Hill Inn are Master’s level clinicians and carry a maximum caseload of three clients. With a three to one clinician-to-client ratio, clinicians are more likely to form trusting and effective working relationships with their clients. We believe that meaningful working relationships between clinicians and clients are necessary if substantive clinical work is to be accomplished. Case managers have four scheduled meetings with each of their clients weekly.

Family therapy is a vital component of effective treatment. Often, family and friends struggle with how to talk about the eating disorder and what to do to help. Case managers facilitate a weekly family therapy session for each client. Family therapy sessions focus on education, opening up the lines of communication within the family system and teaching the family how to provide support for their loved one. If a family lives a great distance away from Laurel Hill Inn, family therapy sessions will take place via a conference call.

The case manager is in contact with the referring outpatient therapist on a weekly basis to discuss the client’s progress in treatment.