Mental illness impacts over 1 billion people around the world. When left untreated, mental illness can result in devastating short-term and long-term consequences for individuals and their loved ones. While there is no single cure for treating mental illness, recovery is available.
With the right management and tools, it’s possible to live a happy and fulfilling life. Mental health therapy retreats can help you learn and obtain the resources you need to start thriving.
What Do Mental Health Therapy Retreats Provide?
Mental health therapy retreats focus on evaluation, stabilization, and support for clients. Many clients entering these facilities have struggled with the pervasive shame and stigma associated with their conditions. Some have felt misunderstood or rejected by their families or friends. Nearly all have experienced feeling alone or ‘abnormal’ at some point.
Through intensive clinical support, clients receive:
- Positive coping skills
- Relapse prevention tips
- Medication evaluation and monitoring
- Holistic therapies (yoga, mindfulness, nutrition, fitness)
- Positive peer support
- Trauma-informed care
- Boundary-making and communication skills
- Relationship support
These facilities use integrative approaches to combine a variety of therapies to help both individuals and their loved ones.
What Are The Main Goals Of Treatment?
Mental illness can impact all areas of functioning. This includes your intimate relationships, work and school performance, physical health, and your self-esteem and confidence. At its worst, mental illness can make ordinary tasks feel impossible.
Additionally, many individuals struggle with ineffective or dangerous coping mechanisms to suppress or numb their mental health symptoms. These coping mechanisms may include:
- Self-harm (cutting or burning)
- Disordered eating (bingeing, purging, restricting, using laxatives)
- Substance use
- Compulsive behaviors (gambling, shopping, sex)
- Crisis issues (attempts to seriously harm self or others)
While these coping mechanisms may briefly ‘pause’ the pain, they don’t take the pain away. In fact, they create more issues, and those consequences can be devastating.
Treatment professionals work with clients to achieve a baseline sense of healthy functioning. With your team, you will learn appropriate ways to cope with your mental illness. You will also learn how to reduce or eliminate the ineffective strategies hindering your growth.
The goal is not to be happy or perfect all the time. Instead, the goal is to focus on creating and sustaining a sense of internal balance and harmony.
What Does A Typical Day At A Mental Health Therapy Retreat Look Like?
It varies on both the program and the individual. You will be meeting with a variety of professionals including psychiatrists, therapists, case managers, and specialists (i.e., nutrition coaches and addictions counselors) throughout your stay. This team will collaborate with you to create an appropriate schedule that meets your needs.
A typical day will typically consist of intensive therapy. In its simplest form, you’ll be talking about your struggles and receive appropriate support for them. However, you won’t just be exploring one pressing issue. You’ll be tackling and processing unresolved traumas, unhealthy relationships, guilt and shame, fear, and goals for the future.
You’ll also spend time putting healthier coping skills into actual use. Most therapy retreats allocate time for leisure and restorative activities. From yoga to personal training to massages, it’s essential to learn how to decompress after completing heavy, emotional work.
Successful mental health treatment is designed for you to focus exclusively on yourself. It may be painful and challenging, but through this process, you’ll understand yourself in a new light- and you’ll feel prepared for implementing healthier skills once you’re back home.
What Happens After Mental Health Treatment?
Treatment alone does not provide a permanent cure for mental illness. Mental illness exists on a continuum. Rather than focusing on curing, it’s healthier (and easier) to focus on managing. In other words, many people can live fulfilling lives via checking, assessing, and learning to live with their mental illness.
That said, clients receiving supportive aftercare once concluding treatment benefit from continued monitoring and support. Aftercare options vary, but they may include a combined approach of:
- Psychiatric medication
- Individual therapy
- Family or marital therapy
- Support groups
- Holistic therapies (acupuncture, yoga, meditation)
- Healthy diet and exercise
Final Thoughts
Even if it feels frightening or uncertain, seeking treatment for your mental health can be one of the greatest gifts you give yourself and your loved ones. Regardless of your condition or past history, you deserve to live a healthy and fulfilling life.
No matter how dark the path seems, we are here to hold the light guide you towards the healing you need. At our luxurious, high-end mental health therapy retreat, we provide individualized treatment for every client. Reach out today.
