Being concerned about your teen’s mental health can be a terrifying and lonely experience for any parent.  It’s often hard to distinguish normal teenage behavior from something more concerning, and to know when you just need to be supportive and patient, versus when you need to get outside help. 

Parents often are not familiar with this level of care, so it’s important to communicate that getting intensive, coordinated, interdisciplinary support early can often prevent crisis visits to the ED or avoidable inpatient stays

Healing Arts workshops teach teens teamwork, collaboration, and acceptance. For teens who are moving through the continuum of care – like stepping down from inpatient to partial or outpatient programming – the arts provide sustained healing.

Bradley Hospital has nearly a century of experience in pediatric mental health. We want to share that expertise beyond the children and families that we treat in our inpatient units, day treatment programs and outpatient clinics. By taking a public health approach to mental health and spreading awareness and skills, we can impact far more people.

To celebrate Social Work Month in March we asked three of our social workers what drew them to social work as a career, and how social work makes a difference as part of the Bradley REACH team…