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Austen Riggs Center Snapshot
The Austen Riggs Center is a vital therapeutic community, open psychiatric residential treatment center, and institute for education and research. Our mission is to promote resilience and self-direction in those with complex psychiatric problems—to help people take charge of their lives. Our work is grounded in the conviction that an individual's problems are inherently meaningful, that such problems are best understood in a social context, and that treatment leads to a more fulfilling life when the sources of suffering are addressed.
The basic ingredients essential to fulfilling the Center's mission are:
-Treatment organized around an intensive individual therapeutic relationship, focusing on the patient's recognition and tolerance of experiences of conflict and pain, leading to the development of a sense of perspective on the illness
-An open therapeutic community involving all staff and patients
-A careful assessment phase, including psychological testing
-A range of programs geared to individual levels of capability and need
-Continuous treatment by the same multidisciplinary team as patients move between programs
-Psychopharmacologic treatment
-Group therapy, family treatment, and help with reintegration into the external community
-A broad Activities Program offering creative expression, with patients in the role of student, and in a "treatment-free zone."
-Ongoing staff development, including training, research, and education, to further the primary clinical task
-Recruitment and retention of quality staff
The basic ingredients essential to fulfilling the Center's mission are:
-Treatment organized around an intensive individual therapeutic relationship, focusing on the patient's recognition and tolerance of experiences of conflict and pain, leading to the development of a sense of perspective on the illness
-An open therapeutic community involving all staff and patients
-A careful assessment phase, including psychological testing
-A range of programs geared to individual levels of capability and need
-Continuous treatment by the same multidisciplinary team as patients move between programs
-Psychopharmacologic treatment
-Group therapy, family treatment, and help with reintegration into the external community
-A broad Activities Program offering creative expression, with patients in the role of student, and in a "treatment-free zone."
-Ongoing staff development, including training, research, and education, to further the primary clinical task
-Recruitment and retention of quality staff
The Austen Riggs Center exists to help people with complex psychiatric disorders take charge of their lives. Our work is grounded in the centrality of human relationships, understanding the meanings behind symptoms, and respecting the individual’s authority and voice in their own treatment and their own life.
