About Third Way Center – Denver
Third Way Center offers inpatient mental health and substance use treatment programs for adolescents. They have five residential treatment centers in the Denver, Colorado area, including this location.
Their focus is on treating trauma through brain healing and their encephalopathy unit is the only one in the United States. They accept Medicaid but your teen must have their Medicaid numbers prior to placement.
They also have a Teen Mother’s Program that serves young mothers from 15 to 19 years old. The program helps teen moms with severe mental health disorders and no financial resources.
In all the programs, they do a holistic evaluation and brain treatment first. They operate on the understanding that teens are unable to respond to treatment due to changes in the brain from trauma. Once the brain is healed then treatment can begin.
Here, they use the Six Boxes Methodology. The first step is identifying bad behaviors which are a symptom that something is wrong. The next step is getting to the underlying feelings that cause bad behavior such as feelings of sadness, anger, or frustration.
Identifying trauma is the next step. This may include abuse, neglect, brain injury, or mental illness. Once the trauma is identified, then they work on getting justice. After obtaining justice, teens have new and better feelings and can then change their negative behaviors.
There are four specialized tracks in all of their inpatient programs. These are vocational and independent living skills, substance use treatment, offense specific programming for teens involved in the justice system and aftercare. The goal is to address each client’s unique needs and equip them for adulthood or to return home.
If you’re getting ready to go out on your own then you’ll receive a job skill assessment. They teach you how to write a resume and sit for an interview. You’ll also learn life skills such as how to store and cook food, clean, and do laundry and other activities of daily living.
All the clients receive therapy. If there’s a substance use disorder involved, they’ll also work with a substance use treatment coordinator. The substance use treatment also involves identifying trauma first so the client can move forward in trust and safety. They’ll develop a unique treatment plan for each teen based on what type of trauma they’ve endured.
This facility is CARF accredited.
