Mirasol Teen is Back!

Mirasol Teen opens its doors on June 6. Our new adolescent program is very exciting and very cutting edge. We are now licensed as a Level I sub-acute care facility, which means that we have been able to expand our group of insurance contracts. We are now contracted with Blue Cross, which is a huge benefit for Mirasol and its prospective clients.

Clients are able to continue their studies while in treatment at Mirasol. We work with the client's home school to make sure they complete homework assignments that are monitored by our certified teachers.

Like Mirasol's adult program, Mirasol Teen combines cognitive behavioral therapy with a wide variety of experiential therapies, including art therapy, dance and movement therapy, and especially neurofeedback. Adolescent clients will receive 5 to 6 neurofeedback sessions per week! And the results are truly astonishing! Depression, anxiety, and OCD - all conditions typically co-occurring with eating disorders - respond dramatically to neurofeedback.

In addition to individual client sessions, Mirasol uses neurofeedback to measure efficacy of other forms of treatment. For example, we administer brain maps before our weekend camping trips, and have measured a 50% reduction in Delta Waves. Delta waves are slow brain waves that can interfere with a person's ability to make decisions and think clearly.

Camping trips, challenge courses, hiking, and even caving are all activities that have been expanded for the adolescent population. We take the clients to Zuzi Dance, a form of low-flying trapeze, once a week. Zuzi is by far the best body image work I've ever found, teaching real life skills to help our clients live in their bodies.

Our clients participate in weekly volunteer work, including serving meals at local soup kitchens, or walking dogs that are homeless or abused. It is important for our clients to learn that not everything important revolves around them, and that they have a moral obligation to help others.

We also offer Family Systems Based therapy, whose core tenet is that all families operate as a system. When a family member is ill, the system is out of balance, and the whole family must recover together.

Our services include a full year of aftercare with telephone support (voice, texting, Skype, etc.). The Mirasol aftercare therapist works closely with the home therapist to monitor the client's progress and provide the support she needs to stay on the path to recovery.

We want the teens who complete our program to achieve not only a dramatic reduction in eating disorder behaviors, but also a significant reduction in depression and anxiety. We want them to leave our program with well-tuned brains that are capable of learning all the tasks required to be a successful adult.

Mirasol a unique treatment facilities offer an alternative approach to eating disorder recovery, combining the best medical and psychiatric interventions with proven alternative therapies.