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I am doctor Norman Thibault I am the clinical director for the Crossroads programs Ive been with the program
for going on about 4 years,
Im also the primary theoropist, in the program, which means most of the students,
male and female, in the program will work with me
here in the office
The typical At The Crossroads student, is, there is actually two types of typical students,
one is transitioning from either a
wilderness program a residential treatment program
they're not ready to go home or the home environment is not conducive to
their success and so
for whatever reason
they'll come to us to start gaining the skills
to transfer what they learned in the wilderness or the other treatment center
and apply it in their lives
and what we try to do is focus on executive functioning skills
to help them prepare for complete independence so that they don't have to
look to their parents or other care givers to take care of them
Second kind of student is someone who
has graduated high school, or has not yet graduated high school but is of the age,
who's really struggled in making the transition to adulthood
meaning that they have either tried college, a bit of college, and struggled through it for
whatever emotional or other reason,
and they just haven’t found success there, or they put off school
and their struggling at home, parents are having a hard time getting them off their
butts to get out there and get to work.
But most of the students we have had
had previous therapists
have dealt with a few different issue such as depression, anxiety
but have not really had to take a look at independence have really
have not really had to look at doing things completely on their own.
so we try to facilitate helping them launch into that, so that they can see
they can do it they don't need to have their parents to be successful
We are very client centered and so we absolutely depend on what
the client bring to us. Obviously if someone is depressed,
If their dealing with a major depression disorder or a major anxiety disorder,
part of the treatment includes the individual therapy, some
family therapy will use a cognitive behavioural approach
we have great arrangement with a psychiatrist office in town, so
will get them in and see if there's any medication interventions that need to be
done or monitoring
if it has already been started
And so part of the clinical program is cognitive
behavioral, it’s also behavioral, solution focused, for someone who presents
with the substance abuse problem some of that might include step work it could
include a variety of other things dealing with substance abuse for those
who don’t do steps
other issues, you know, there’s personality disorder on occasion will get those
and that’s more of a long term behavioral approach
were a dialectic
behavioral therapy
there’s
a whole variety of interventions that you can use,
but the idea being mainly that we try to specifically focus on what the client
presents with. Part of a solution focused approach and a strength based approach
takes a look at the fact that when we look at someone who comes into a
clinic
often times we look at weakness deficits areas of concerns, rather than focusing on
areas of success in their lives and so the program really does try to put an
emphasis on look here's what you do well let's take advantage of this skill set
and utilize it
to your betterment
because too often
a lot of young people we see have already tried some things and haven't been
successful and so there really discouraged and demoralized and they don't believe that
they can do it especially without mom and dad's help or a caregivers help
and so
part of what we do is try to take a look at shoring up some of some these weaknesses but
that's not all we focus on we really do
focus on strengths, and here’s what you do well let’s take advantage of it and let’s try
to create an environment or an internship or a situation were we can tap into
some of those strengths and you can see that you can get small victories.