Our Treatment Approach

When patients are admitted to the Austen Riggs Center, they begin to take charge of their lives. Riggs is designed as an open setting, with no locks, seclusion rooms or privilege systems. With this freedom comes both responsibility and an expectation that patients will take authority for their own treatment. Riggs’ unique treatment approach is centered around a therapeutic community based on the notion of examined living. The careful exploration of difficult life experiences has the best chance of success if patients are invited to share their strengths with each other and the staff in a serious partnership of mutual problem solving and social learning. The therapeutic community is structured as a series of interconnected patient/staff groups and programs, ranging from community meetings, social support groups and symptom-focused groups to patient-government structures, Community Center activities and a work program. It is supported by interpersonally-focused nursing and an innovative fine arts program.

Psychotherapy
Patients at Riggs participate in 4-times weekly intensive individual psychodynamic psychotherapy with a psychiatrist or doctoral-level psychologist on the Riggs staff. The developing relationship between the patient and therapist becomes an agent of change in a process of learning, unlearning, re-learning, and growth. Through the translation of symptoms into words, therapy helps patients acknowledge, bear and put into perspective painful life experiences so that they may begin to take charge of their present situation and their future. The supportive patient-staff community that surrounds this work is essential to its success, as is the practical, behavioral focus of work with staff from other disciplines, like nursing, social work, and community staff.

Initial Evaluation and Treatment
All patients are admitted to a six-week period of intensive evaluation and treatment that culminates in a formal case presentation to the clinical staff for treatment planning. After this initial period, most patients continue in treatment within our continuum of programs, including long-term Residential, Day Treatment and Aftercare programs. Patients also have access to hospital-level care for crisis stabilization.

“The goals of psychodynamic psychotherapy include, but extend beyond, symptom remission. Successful treatment should not only relieve symptoms (i.e., get rid of something) but also foster the positive presence of psychological capacities and resources. Depending on the person and the circumstances, these might include the capacity to have more fulfilling relationships, make more effective use of one’s talents and abilities, maintain a realistically based sense of self esteem, tolerate a wider range of affect, have more satisfying sexual experiences, understand self and others in more nuanced and sophisticated ways, and face life’s challenges with greater freedom and flexibility. Such ends are pursued through a process of self reflection, self exploration, and self discovery that takes place in the context of a safe and deeplyauthentic relationship between therapist and patient.”

“The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy”, American Psychologist (in press), Jonathan Shedler, PhD, University of Colorado Denver