Ryther’s Co-Occurring Program: “Becca” breaks free of addiction and finds she can succeed

15-year-old “Becca” completed inpatient treatment for a dependency on multiple drugs and stepped down to Ryther’s Co-Occurring Program, an outpatient program for teens with both a substance use and mental health disorder. With a prior diagnosis of ADHD, she was making progress at Ryther in therapy. But her toxicology results, which are monitored as part of the program, showed that she had not stopped using drugs. Her therapist at Ryther, Dr. Cristina Sanders, discussed how Becca was not being honest with her or her family. This led to a lot of open dialogue with her family during subsequent sessions. Dr. Sanders employed evidence-based Motivational Interviewing to confirm with Becca that change was necessary in her life when it came to getting what she wanted and that the use of drugs was counterproductive. This helped support the positive behavioral changes Becca was making and served to increase her insight into her behaviors. Dr. Sanders involved the entire family, using psycho-education with her parents to help them support Becca. She is a healthy teen now and is planning on college when earlier she wasn’t even sure she would graduate high school. She talks about being much happier in all areas of her life. Before Ryther, she feared never breaking her negative patterns, but now she’s been setting her own boundaries and succeeding. Becca has made changes in her life that she said would never have happened without Ryther.