Summary: To find depression treatment for your child or teen, it’s important to find a treatment center with a clinical staff with specialty training in child and adolescent psychotherapy and counseling.
Key Points:
- In mental health treatment, child refers to patients age 5-11, and teen refers to patients age 12-17.
- Treatment for children and adolescents needs to be adapted to meet their specific needs.
- Clinicians who receive specialty training in tailoring treatment to children and teens are able to support them more effectively than clinicians who focus on adults only.
- Learning to communicate appropriately with children and teens is key to creating a positive treatment alliance, which improves outcomes.
Finding Depression Treatment for Your Child or Teen
When you learn one of your school age kids or teenagers has a depressive disorder, the first thing you may wonder is this: how do I find depression treatment for my child or teen?
Researching potential depression treatment centers for your child or teen is the first step. Getting professional support sooner rather than later is essential, because the consequences of untreated depression are serious. Without treatment, mild depression can become moderate, and moderate depression can become severe.
Untreated depression, whether mild, moderate, or severe, can lead to the following negative consequences:
- Problems making and maintaining meaningful peer relationships.
- Problems with parents and siblings
- Difficulty with academics at school
- Difficulty with behavior at school
- Long-term changes in brain structure and function
In some cases, severe depression can prevent a child or teen from engaging in the basic activities of daily life, such as attending to personal hygiene, eating healthy meals on time, getting enough sleep, and engaging in a healthy level of activity or exercise.
We understand you don’t want those things for your child: you want them to live a life they choose, rather than one determined by the symptoms of a depressive disorder. As you search for depression treatment for your child or teen, you’ll learn about the different levels of care available in most treatment centers.
Depression Treatment for Children and Teens: What are Levels of Care?
In mental health treatment, level of care refers to the relative degree of intensity, immersion, time-in-therapy, and supervision related to a given treatment plan. Generally speaking, from least intensive to most intensive, you’ll find the following levels of care in mental health treatment: outpatient treatment programs (OP), intensive outpatient programs (IOP), partial hospitalization programs (PHP), residential treatment centers (RTC), and inpatient psychiatric hospitalization.
In this article, we’ll focus on outpatient programs, which are our specialty at BACA.
Outpatient Treatment Programs (OP)
Depression treatment for Gen Z teens/young adults in IOP programs typically include office visits with a therapist, counselor, or psychiatrist once or twice a week. Outpatient programs are least intensive level of care, and may be appropriate for teens/young adults with mild to moderate depressive symptoms. For more information about our outpatient programs for teens/young adults, please visit our treatment page:
Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at BACA
Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP)
Depression treatment for Gen Z teens/young adults in IOP programs typically involve 2-3 hours of treatment, 3-5 days per week. This level of care may be appropriate for teens/young adults with mild to moderate depressive symptoms. For more information about this level of care for Gen Z teens/young adults, please visit our IOP treatment page:
Intensive Outpatient Programs at BACA
Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP)
Depression treatment for Gen Z teens/young adults in PHP programs typically involve 3-5 hours of treatment for 5 days each week. This level of care may be appropriate for teens with moderate to severe depressive symptoms. For more information about this level of care for Gen Z teens/young adults, please visit our PHP treatment page:
Partial Hospitalization Programs at BACA
When you decide which level of care may be appropriate for your child or teen, the next step is to find a list of potential treatment centers.
Depression Treatment for Children and Teens: What to Look For
When you search for depression treatment for your school age child or teenager, start by ensuring any program you consider has clinicians on staff with specialized training in child and adolescent mental health. Next, ensure any program you consider includes these components:
1. Complete psychiatric evaluation.
- This is called a biopsychosocial evaluation. Treatment centers should collect comprehensive information about your child or teen. This includes a full psychiatric and medical history – including treatment details – and any relevant information on specific family dynamics.
2. Holistic approach.
- An effective treatment program for children and teens must include address all areas of the individual’s life and customize treatment modalities methods to meet the unique needs of each patient.
3. Family involvement.
- When the family participates in the treatment process, and everyone in the family knows what’s going on, and their role in the healing journey, outcomes improve.
4. Developmental matching.
- An effective treatment program should include modalities tailored to the developmental stage of the individual receiving care. In this case, this means programs designed to meet the needs of children and teens.
5. Positive treatment alliance.
- Providers working with children and teens can succeed when they create an atmosphere of openness, trust, and understanding. For children and teens, feeling safe and trusting their provider is a prerequisite for productive treatment. A child or teen who safe and trusts their therapist is more likely to engage in open, honest conversations about their thoughts and emotions.
6. Well-trained, licensed, specialist staff.
- Providers and staff at the treatment center must receive special training in child and adolescent development. They should also have extensive clinical experience tailoring treatment to meet the needs of children and teens.
7. Gender, culture, diversity.
- Effective providers understand the nuances of tailored treatment for people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and members of gender and sexual minority groups.
8. Ongoing treatment, full continuum of care.
- High-quality depression treatment programs offer support across the various levels of care – from less immersive to more immersive, or vice-versa – and includes resources and tools for long-term support.
Call us here at BACA to start your search, or start with the list of resources we provide below.
Finding Help: Resources
These online resources can help you find effective, evidence-based treatment for your Gen Z teen or young adult:
- The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP): Treatment locator
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): Treatment locator
- The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): Find Your Local NAMI
It’s important to understand that the sooner a person with depression engages in evidence-based treatment for depression, the better the outcome.
