Treatment Program Overview
The Carolina House residential treatment program for women age 17 years and over is located in a beautiful craftsman style farm house. Our brightly colored rooms, spacious kitchen, cozy bedrooms, and breezy screen porch are surrounded by wildlife, forest, wild flowered field, and gravel roads.
We offer a whole-person approach to the treatment of eating disorders, focusing on core mindfulness as a means to healing from disordered eating behaviors. Carolina House believes that best-practice treatment of eating disorders considers a person's context in its fullness, including systems of spirituality and faith.
The treatment approach is designed to encourage self-exploration toward transformation to self-nurturing expressions of living. Our core treatment modality expands upon Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills as developed by Marcia Linehan, Ph.D.. DBT is a well-researched approach found to be highly effective in treating disordered eating behaviors through teaching effective coping skills. The DBT skills are Core Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.
Our focus highlights the Core Mindfulness skills, which involves developing the capacity to stop the 'chatter' of the mind, seeking to develop and nourish present-moment awareness of physical, emotional, and relational experiences. We increase our capacity to make wise choices when we function with awareness and understand how our choices impact our experience. Carolina House promotes sustainable living practices, reframing food as a medium through which one can experience increased connection with oneself, others, and the environment.
Additionally, other appropriate treatment modalities are utilized to support increased awareness through a variety of experiential, insight-oriented, cognitive behavioral, and educational components. Carolina House's unique multidisciplinary approach includes individual and family therapy, art therapy, yoga and mindfulness experiences, culinary and nutrition therapy, Body Movement Therapy, as well as interpersonal effectiveness and process groups. Our program offers patients an opportunity to authentically and critically discuss with a community of voices the role of spirituality in their lives, especially as it relates to their emotional and behavioral well-being. Patients leave Carolina House several times a week for supervised group outings. These outings include opportunities for a variety of experiences with food, Body Movement Therapy, creativity groups, community service, and group building.
Aftercare Program: Our aftercare program is designed to offer continued support for ongoing development of core coping skills, sustainable living practices, and effective patterns of behavior. Weekly aftercare programming is offered for local patients who have completed our residential program.
Online Continuing Care:Recovery from an eating disorder is a lifelong process, and clinical research verifies that Continuing Care is a vital aspect of that recovery. Continuing Care programs are structured support groups that meet once a week, and are designed to strengthen the treatment process by providing the therapeutic support necessary for long-term recovery.
CRC Health’s Online Eating Disorder Support Group is a Continuing Care program that provides world-wide accessibility through live, anonymous, online group sessions. The groups meet for one hour each week with an experienced counselor to discuss topics that enhance quality of life and prevent relapse. In their online groups, members give and receive support from others who can relate to the complex issues, stresses, and fears associated with the process of recovery.
The many advantages of being enrolled in an online program include the ability to engage in weekly group sessions from the comfort of your own home, while participating anonymously in a safe and supportive atmosphere. The Online Eating Disorder Support Group is a natural complement to existing therapeutic treatment recommendation, and enables members to work together to maintain and promote long-term recovery.
Family Program: Family consultation is a vitally important part of the Carolina House treatment model. We recognize that the definition of 'family' is fluid for many persons and we welcome participation of those persons most closely connected to the patient, most often spouses, partners, or significant others, parents or guardians, and occasionally siblings as appropriate. We offer individual family therapy sessions once per week as well as an intensive group family weekend once per month.
Staff members work with patients to incorporate mindful awareness into their daily lives. Increased awareness of self and internal body clues will be facilitated through classes comprised both of didactic exposure to the concepts of mindfulness as well as practice of various techniques. Mindfulness techniques will be continually reinforced during regularly scheduled yoga classes.