u/Roseelesbian

As a teenager I went to multiple residential eating disorder treatment centers. I've heard mixed opinions on if eating disorder treatment centers can be considered tti or not. And it also made me wonder if the same applies for substance abuse treatment centers.

I was reading the 'minimum standards for teenage healthcare' and I have never been to or heard of any residential facility that meets all those standards. So is every teen residential facility considered tti?

I know that, as someone who has been in every level of care for eating disorders (inpatient, residential, PHP, iop, outpatient), I have found the residential level of care to be redundant, and only resulting in added trauma.

This is because, it's difficult to see a good reason to take a child out of the home for 'therapeutic' reasons, except in cases of abuse or problems at home. I have never been to a substance abuse facility so I can't speak on that. But I do think that the residential level of care should not exist for eating disorders or general behavioral issues because what is the therapeutic purpose of taking someone away from their family, friends, and everything familiar and isolate them from society? Even if they somehow did improve in terms of their mental health or eating disorder, how are they going to maintain that when they are suddenly put back in their original environment?

I personally never got better from my eating disorder, UNTIL I was in treatment that actually kept me at home. Where I learned how to recover in the environment that I was going to be in for the foreseeable future and could learn how to integrate that into my daily life.

If a child has problems bad enough that is a threat to themselves or others, they should be in inpatient treatment, not residential.

If a person with an eating disorder needs medical stabilization, they should be in temporary inpatient treatment until they are stabilized and then go to PHP where they can continue to receive medical monitoring and therapy without going to an abusive residential facility.

Even if inpatient treatment is traumatic (which it absolutely is) it can at least be justified as life saving care. The same cannot be said for residential treatment.

It's very difficult for me to think of a situation where residential treatment would be warranted for mental health or eating disorders over inpatient or PHP.

I'm wanting to learn more about this because I have a lot of trauma from my time in treatment centers, but I don't have the same experience as people who went to wilderness therapy or therapeutic boarding schools. So I'm very interested in hearing others thoughts on this.

And I wanted to clarify this because I see some people talk about eating disorder treatment centers on here, but it doesn't generally seem to be included in the discussion so I'm not sure if there is a distinction or not and what that distinction is. My same question applies for substance abuse treatment centers, which I don't have any personal experience with so I can't speak on it, but i am curious.

Thank you for reading, I know it was long, but I appreciate what ya'll do here and I'm glad that more awareness is being brought to tti.