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What are the advantages of inpatient mental health treatment?
When you find yourself wondering when to seek inpatient treatment for depression, it can be helpful to know exactly what inpatient mental health treatment has to offer.
In a DBT-based inpatient mental health treatment center like THIRA Health, you’ll have 24/7 support throughout your stay. You’ll spend your time in regular individual therapy, daily DBT skill groups, communal meals that provide nutritional support, and recreational time with fellow program members. You’ll receive coordinated and personalized treatment plan development, nutritional support, and medication management, and your stay will also include family involvement and holistic healing approaches like mindfulness, expressive arts, and movement therapies like yoga.
Residential depression treatment in Seattle offers you a space to focus on your mental well-being, spending time in a community with other teen girls, women, or gender nonconforming individuals who are also looking for relief from depression. It also provides you with consistent and coordinated care from therapists, medical doctors, nutritionists, mindful movement and art therapy specialists, and more, all in the same space.
Signs it’s time to seek inpatient treatment for depression
Now that you have a better idea of what inpatient depression treatment can provide, what are some signs you’d benefit from the high level of support and care residential treatment offers?
Your everyday life is making your depression symptoms worse
Sometimes, the people, places, and life pressures you encounter every day can worsen your depression symptoms. Toxic relationships and friendships, work pressure, unstable or unsafe home environments, daily chores, and spaces that remind you of hard times and difficult emotions can add to your depression, making outpatient healing less effective.
Inpatient depression treatment in Seattle helps you cut out distractions and reduce life pressures so you can better focus on healing. By taking time away from work, family responsibilities, financial pressure, and spaces that may hold too many difficult memories, you can get started on healing in a way that will make it easier to cope when you return home.
You struggle to prioritize your mental health
By the time you’ve attended to your family, fulfilled your work obligations, and tried to take part in a social life, you may find you’re out of time to focus on your mental health. When life is too busy, it’s hard to take the time to focus on using DBT skills, meaning your therapy goals may fall by the wayside.
Depression also comes with symptoms like hopelessness, exhaustion, and negative self-beliefs that can make it even harder to put effort into your mental health. A busy life can be a very effective distraction that helps you avoid putting work into your mental wellbeing, so depression and busyness can feed into each other, holding you back from true mental wellbeing.
DBT-based inpatient mental health treatment cuts back on life’s distractions so you can consistently prioritize mental health, and asks you to confront depression symptoms head-on, using DBT skills like opposite action when you’d rather avoid therapy, or STOP when you’re so busy you struggle to slow down.
Your depression symptoms are making it hard to take care of yourself
Hygiene, eating well, exercise, and proper sleep can be very difficult when dealing with depression, due to exhaustion, insomnia, appetite changes, and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Outpatient depression therapy often doesn’t offer material help in these self-care necessities, but inpatient mental health treatment programs understand that caring for your body and meeting your basic needs is foundational to improving your mental well-being.
Inpatient depression treatment won’t do everything for you, but you’ll have nourishing meals provided, your routine will include opportunities to exercise, and your support team will help you prioritize healthy sleep and active self-care as part of your treatment plan.
Your doctor/therapist/social worker recommends inpatient mental health treatment
Sometimes, it’s hard to see for yourself that you need the level of support and care inpatient depression treatment can provide. Depression can cloud your perspective to the point where you accept feeling exhausted, sad, and empty all the time as normal.
When a doctor, therapist, social worker, friend, family member, etc. recommends inpatient depression treatment, listen and consider it. You might feel offended, frightened, or inclined to totally dismiss the suggestion, which is normal, because the idea of inpatient mental health treatment can feel intimidating, shameful, or strange at first. If you have people in your life recommending inpatient treatment, we encourage you to listen and consider trying out mental health treatment that puts you first, focuses on fulfilling your needs, and helps you grow into a skill set that makes coping with depression easier.
You need support that is available 24/7
Depression doesn’t respect business hours. You may find the middle of the night is the time you need the most support, or the weekend may be the time you struggle the most. IOP and PHP programs often intentionally don’t operate on the weekends, primarily to help participants reintegrate into their daily lives after they’ve completed residential mental health treatment, but for those whose depression isn’t yet well controlled, more support is needed.
In an inpatient depression treatment program, there is support staff available 24/7. If you have a crisis, whether it’s in the middle of the night or on a weekend, someone will be there to help you. You can work through crises with help, having someone there to walk you through using DBT skills in the moment. Having this support during early treatment can keep you safe and help you stabilize enough to step down to a PHP or IOP program with time.
Your depression symptoms have become dangerous
When depression escalates into passive or active suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury (aka self-harm), or reckless, impulsive, or angry behavior that endangers you and others, your symptoms have moved on from burdensome and difficult to dangerous.
This is a time where outpatient support is probably not enough to keep you safe, and it is a very clear sign your depression has definitely become a big enough problem to warrant inpatient treatment (though inpatient depression treatment is also very useful before your symptoms escalate to dangerous levels!).
You need to rapidly establish a comprehensive mental healthcare plan
When your depression symptoms become a significant life disruption, you may need to quickly set up a comprehensive treatment plan to help you tackle depression from many angles at once. Even when your mental health is at its best, it can be difficult to coordinate support from therapists, doctors, holistic care practitioners, nutritionists, and friends and family, and the weight of depression can make it especially hard to coordinate care between multiple professionals and the people in your life on your own.
Residential mental healthcare can connect you with multiple mental healthcare practitioners in one space, and their coordinated care will start with a comprehensive care plan that takes your personal situation and needs into account. When depression is severely disrupting your life, residential treatment can be the rapid response you need to access a comprehensive mental healthcare plan right away.
THIRA can help you decide if it’s time to enter inpatient depression treatment in Seattle
THIRA Health understands that the right level of care can make a huge difference in improving the life of someone suffering from depression. They offer residential, PHP, and intensive outpatient programs for adolescents and adults seeking intensive depression treatment, and their expert intake staff can help you choose the best treatment option for you. For more information about inpatient depression treatment in Seattle, contact THIRA Health today.
