Active family participation throughout treatment can play a crucial role in helping you take charge of your life.

Typically, family members first meet with a clinical social worker on the day of admission. During this meeting, clinical social workers orient families to treatment in the open setting and family involvement, and invite these relatives to share their experiences, hopes, and concerns. During the six-week initial evaluation and treatment period, clinical social workers talk with you and members of your family to gather a detailed multigenerational family history in order to understand the current situation in a historical context. They also work with you to explore different ways you might include your family in your work at Riggs.

With your authorization, clinical social workers provide (over the phone or through Zoom and in-person family meetings) ongoing support and information to family members, to address questions they may have and to help them with their own emotional reactions to your work at Riggs. In this way, your clinical social worker may serve as a consultant to your family, offering support in making sense of the treatment process and family dynamics. At times, these discussions illuminate how concerns about you may be connected to issues in the broader family system. Clinical social workers also engage with you and your family members to address the cost of treatment.

We also offer ongoing family work as needed. In these sessions (which include you, your family members, your clinical social worker, and your psychotherapist) the family system is the focus of exploration. As families become aware of interactional patterns, sometimes handed down through generations, that may contribute to difficulties in individual members, they can develop new ways of relating to each other, improving relationships, and supporting the growth of each family member.