Our focus is adolescent mental health and so we serve adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 and we offer group therapy. Our focus is building skills and really working through managing distorted thinking, difficult emotions, so that their behaviors change in turn. Because we work with adolescents all day, every day, we have a better gauge of what does a mental health crisis look like for an adolescent. We really focus on making our program engaging and dynamic, and so we don’t just want to stick to one modality. We’re approaching kids as a whole person, and using all of those different modalities, we’re really able to tap into the natural strengths of each kiddo and get them fully engaged in our program. We are going to change the face of mental health for adolescents in the Denver region. That means clear communication, timely responses to phone calls, asking questions. If we are not the right place for you, we are going to help provide the guardians or the families with resources to get where they need to go. We’re all very passionate about what we do. We love our clients. If you can make even a 1% difference in each day, that to us is a success. That’s really what we’re doing is the absolute dedication to the kids and their dedication to improving systems so we can continue to improve our quality and the way we work with families and kids.
So, what you’ll do if you are interested is you’ll reach out on our website or give us a call. We have intake clinicians that are going to meet with kiddo and the family before they’re admitted to our programs.
The purpose of that assessment is for us to make sure that we are the right fit for you and if we’re not we’re going to make sure that we connect you with the resource that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s us or somebody else, we want to see you grow and succeed.
We schedule the level of care during which a clinician really asks all the questions we need to know. And then they talk to the individual client, the kiddo, adolescent, and they talk to the parent. Sometimes we get, a lot of times we get the two sides of the same coin, sometimes we don’t. And then sometimes the answers are actually in those gaps. And that clinician would decide what level of care do they need, just more intensive services than regular outpatient once a week services or is it a several times a week? If it’s a several times a week, is it three times a week or is it five times a week? And how many hours a day? If you’re accepted into our program, you’ll usually know that day or the next day. We work really, really quickly because we know when you are seeking mental health services, when you make that Google search, you often can’t wait three or four weeks. You need something right now.
If someone has high needs, we don’t want them sitting around and waiting. We want them in as soon as we can. So, we push the whole system, which is the insurance, transportation, the availability and groups to make it happen. We equip you with all of the information.
You’ll receive a tour. You’ll get a brief orientation, so you know what to expect. We’ll run through the schedule with you again. That way when you walk in on day one, you already have an idea of, okay, here’s how this day that I know is going to be really hard, but I know what to expect, so here’s how it’s going to go. And then the kiddo starts. That’s when they’re assigned an individual provider. And that individual provider is the contact person for the family, for the medical provider, for school, for court and for the kiddo themselves. And they basically track progress and see that the individual actually benefits from our services, because again, we want them to benefit from the point that they start. and once we see that they’re ready to step down, so less intense services, sometimes it’s again with us, and sometimes it’s with an outside provider, so we try and bridge those gaps so that things are as seamless as possible.
We are constantly focusing on accessibility. Some families can’t bring in the kid during the morning, some families can’t bring in the kid in the afternoon, sometimes there’s afternoon activities or court involvement, and so we work with them to create a plan that works for this specific family. We work very closely with a lot of the school systems in the Denver and Westminster areas and we also work with a lot of other community resources but it’s as simple as searching our website if you’re just a family with a kiddo in need.
The staff are dedicated, they’re loyal, and they go up and beyond.
When we hire people, my questions to them are, “Have you worked with adolescents? How was that for you?” We want people who know that working with adolescents means working with their guardians. It means working with their schools. It means that when they call a school, they’re excited, they’re happy. They’re not thinking, “Oh my God, that’s another call I need to put in.” They’re thinking, “I’m advocating for my kiddo here.”
We really look for the level of commitment they have to the kids and to the process, and how do we work towards being a strong advocate for these kids. The
Clinicians really know how to get down on their level and they’re passionate about this age group and they’re able to meet them where they’re at and say, “Hey, we’re here with you.” They speak their language, they know the slang, like they’re able to kind of keep up with them. They’re more than just you know their mental health professionals like they care about them they want them to succeed.
We all work very intrinsically together we’re all very passionate about what we do we love our clients.
Really what we’re doing is the absolute dedication to the kids and their dedication to improving systems so we can continue to improve our quality and the way we work with families and kids.
We primarily use two different modalities: DBT, which is Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and then CBT, which is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
We know that those are some of the most effective forms of therapy, especially in the group setting. We also mix in a couple other modalities in our practice.
We do a lot of art therapy. We’re working on getting our music therapy back in place as well. We really focus on making our program engaging and dynamic, and so we don’t just want to stick to one modality. We recognize that it’s a tough thing for kids to do to sit in a program for six hours a day or three hours a day. And when you incorporate a couple of different modalities, you really get the whole picture of the kiddo instead of just focusing on, you know, where are you struggling emotionally or where are these self-harm urges coming from?
We’re approaching kids as a whole person and using all of those different modalities. We’re really able to tap into the natural strengths of each kiddo and get them fully engaged in our program.
Our focus is building skills and really working through managing distorted thinking, difficult emotions so that their behaviors change in turn. So focus on evidence and making sure our outcomes are looking great, but at the same time, again, making sure it’s personalized and tailored to the interests and desires of a kid so that they can really tap in and become passionate about improving their mental health.
IOP stands for Intensive Outpatient Program, and we have two different programs that we offer. Our morning IOP goes from 9:30 to 12:20. They’re attending three group therapy sessions a day. They’re assigned a primary clinician. They work on a treatment plan. That treatment plan is reviewed every two weeks as opposed to every week in PHP. And with that, we also still do communicate and work with the family. We can offer family meetings if they’re clinically necessary, but otherwise we communicate with families on a weekly basis, touch base on how things are going at home, clinician will share how things are going in programming. And same thing, we really work with the family from day one so that they can leave our program being successful.
So we have that morning program, and then our evening program goes from 3:30 to 6:20. So same thing, three group therapy sessions a day, 10-minute breaks in between, they have an opportunity to check in with their primary clinician and they’re attending three days a week instead of five with our PHP program. Kiddos can expect to be in our IOP anywhere between six to eight weeks, but again, it depends on the needs of the kiddos. So, it could be shorter and it could be longer.
In both PHP and IOP, we’re also communicating with the external treatment team of each kiddo. So, if they have an individual therapist, a psychiatrist, a primary care physician, we’re working with them so that our care is integrated. And then they know, again, what the individual therapist might wanna work on with KIDDO outside of program. Or here are the areas where we’ve made a lot of progress, but we’re still seeing poor distress tolerance. So how can we work with everybody that’s in KIDDO’s life, both inside and outside of program, so that, again, they can thrive and grow and bloom and spread their wings.
Our partial hospitalization program is a more intensive group therapy model. Some kids hear the word partial hospitalization, and they freak out and they say, I don’t want to have anything to do with a hospital. So even though our program is called partial hospitalization, it’s just because it is five days a week and so many hours a day. But we try to make our groups not feel like school that you’re sitting in. Someone is talking at you, and you have to take notes, but rather very engaging. So, lots of games and videos and time outside. We do rock painting. We do karaoke.
Partial hospitalization is an insurance term, so it is based on being part of a hospital-based system, but it has expanded in the industry to be a non-hospital-based program. So, it’s basically an insurance term, meaning a certain level of care is being provided and a certain amount of time is being provided in the therapeutic environment. It’s approximately 20 hours a week. Kids come five days a week for five hours, and we offer that basically during school time. And while parents often will get confused or worried about school, this is actually a replacement of school temporarily while they manage their significant symptoms of depression or anxiety or those types of things. And we work with the schools to help with the transition into our PHP program and then out and back into the school. It’s designed for those kiddos that are really needing lot of support. We get a lot of kiddos that step down from the hospital or are struggling with some of those higher risk behaviors that I mentioned: suicidal ideation, self-harm, homicidal ideation, really high levels of emotional dysregulation.
So, we have a full day of programming, again 9:30 to 3:00, five group therapy sessions a day within those six hours and an hour break for lunch and then they get a snack in the morning as well. They’re assigned the primary clinician. We’ll do weekly family meetings. So that’s a great opportunity for kiddos to touch base with primary clinician and family as a whole to discuss progress in treatment, successes, how they’re doing with their treatment plan goals, to start planning for discharge. That’s something that we really focus on from the moment kiddo gets in our program. How do we set them up for success when they’re done with us? Like Alis is really just the starting point. We know mental health and recovery as a whole is a journey. It’s actually where our name comes from. Alis means “wings” in Latin and we want to see kiddos grow and flourish not only in our program but also when they leave.
Group therapy can be a benefit because it allows for socialization of the kids. They are able to make friends and build skills, which builds confidence. Now, sometimes that can have an opposite effect, right? There’s more people to bicker with or gossip about. But generally, that is why we’re here, is to help.
How do you function within a group setting? If you think about it, most kids that are this age are actively in school. And so, we are modeling that in the sense of how do you work with people in distress? How do you work through conflict if you have that? How do you manage your own symptoms while you’re working through those types of things?
So, adolescents who experience high acuity mental health needs are those for whom getting individual outpatient services or maybe school-based services is not enough. So maybe they need to be seen several times a week. Maybe they have issues that their individual provider isn’t comfortable with. That is something that we do. Usually that is kids who self-harm, kids who have suicidal ideation, maybe even have had an attempt in their past. Group practice providers may not be equipped to see someone once a week or once every other week and still know that their client is being taken care of and if there is a crisis can manage it. So, we manage crises, we live in crises. We have our eyes on our clients every day or several days a week and we get to know them. So, we can track their moods, we can track their reactions, we know if something happened at school or at home they don’t have to wait a week until they see us again. They also develop a one-to-one relationship with our providers. So of course there’s that personal who do you click with, but also who gets to know you, who talks to your family, who talks to your teachers, who talks to your medical provider. And based on all that we know we start developing an expectation of how this kid is and what their needs are. When someone is being seen on an outpatient level or outpatient basis, sometimes the clinician has people back-to-back for five, six hours, and so they can’t take an hour off to call EMS to make sure the individual is transported to an evaluation crisis service or to an ED. We have other people on board that can take it from there and they’re usually, they know the client as well, so they can call parents, they can call EMS, they can seamlessly provide that bridge to that higher level of care.
Our first level is receptive, and every kiddo that walks through the door starts on the receptive level. So here this level is all about meeting kiddo where they’re at. So receptive really asks for kiddos to be present in group and with their clinician, both physically and mentally. So we’re asking them to be an active listener, to introduce themselves, to follow general program rules and expectations, and to do the best they can with what they’ve got.
So, after receptive comes engagement. So, engagement, we still hold all of the same expectations that we do in that receptive level, but we start to ask and want to see a little bit more from kids. So, in engagement, they’re engaging in groups, they’re participating, they’re sharing their insights, they’re using their skills, they’re asking questions, they’re curious about the materials, they’re being kind to their peers. We’re kind of combining receptive and just taking it up a little bit of like, hey, can we push you to maybe go out of your comfort zone bit more, to speak up more in group if that’s not something that you normally do.
So our next level is mindfulness. We’re asking kids to start to be even more mindful and intentional with how they’re relating to themselves, how they’re relating to peers. We’re asking them to start taking more initiative to apply their learned coping skills, not only in the group setting, but also at home. So with that, how are we making sure that in all aspects of our life, we’re responding in a way that’s healthy, in a way that’s supportive to ourselves and others. Here, we are expecting kiddos to really start to tap into some of those social skills. How can I support my peers? How can I be an active listener? How can I show up for others and for myself? We also are starting to see, usually in that mindfulness level, some leadership skills come out too. Again, like taking initiatives, speaking up, using your voice, being assertive in your communication, setting healthy boundaries, and showing other kiddos that it’s okay to do that too. And I think that’s also one of the coolest parts of our program is that at any time, we have kids on all of the levels. So a kiddo that walks those doors on day one, who’s on receptive, might see a kiddo that’s on mindfulness, who’s actively participating in group, who’s using the skills, and is a walking example of what Alis is all about. And through that, they see, okay, if he can do it, or she can do it, or they can do it, Why can’t I do it? I’m really no different than them.
And then our last level, our top level is leadership. And this is something that is really exciting cause we see kids work really, really hard to get to leadership because there’s lots of fun, positive reinforcements that come with that leadership level. So here we have pretty high expectations of kids. We are not expecting perfection when kids are on leadership by any means, but we’re expecting kids to apply and live out everything that they’ve learned in our program so far. When kiddos get to leadership, they have the opportunity to help facilitate a group, which is really cool. So they get to work alongside their primary clinician to come up with a group idea and then are of course supported in that group with their clinician. But they get to teach those skills to other kids, which is a beautiful thing that we get to see. So that’s one of my favorite parts of this job too. They get a little bit more freedom during the day. And we also get to go to a little boba party with them too, which is really fun. But leadership really is about embodying what we teach at Alis.
And so that’s our level system, which is what Alis’s growth is all about.
The primary issues that we see within kiddos are suicidal ideation, self-harm, school avoidance, depression, anxiety, difficulty forming healthy social connections, emotional dysregulation. They’re going to be less engaged in their day-to-day activities. They’re going to isolate from friends and family. Things that they used to like, they don’t want to do anymore. They just aren’t motivated. Kids struggling at school are things we’re going to see. So really that depression, anxiety, struggles at school, struggles socially, struggling with the family. And we’re talking not about having a day off, we’re talking about having frequent days off. So having a lot of that distress, having a lot of that impairment, having it become the new normal, and there are things we can do about it. It doesn’t have to be that way. Once it starts to become a continuous pattern, or it’s getting to the point where you feel like behaviors might be out of control in the home, then I would ask you to call us.
Something that we see a lot is kiddos with really high expectations for themselves, almost unrealistic expectations. Or we can see the flip side of that, kiddos coming in feeling really hopeless about their ability to succeed and to make progress. And we really communicate this message at Alis that success to us doesn’t mean perfection, it means growth. If you can make even a 1% difference in each day, that to us is a success.
We by no means expect kids to walk out of our doors and never have a challenging day again. Success means how do I have a really hard day and know how to handle it in a way that doesn’t hurt me or hurt somebody else? Our focus really is how do we get you to a place where you can participate in your life, you can feel like you have choice and you’re able to make, you know, decisions that are grounded in who you really are.
We don’t want kids to walk in with the expectation that everything is going to be perfect when they leave because, again, that’s not how we set kiddos up for success. You know, you can have a really bad day, you can make mistakes you can fail, and you know that you can get back up and push forward. So, it’s really equipping kids with the skills that they need to be their best self, to be their most authentic self, and to have bad days and tell themselves, it’s okay, I know that I can handle this. So, I like to think of Alis as a place that kind of changes what it means to be successful. You don’t have to be perfect; you just have to get 1% better.
I received a call from a medical doctor probably about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, about a young man that she was seeing. He was probably 16 at the time. He was struggling a lot with the dynamics of his relationship with his birth mother, as well as being a 16-year-old in a house with rules and some substances. So we brought him in and he joined our program. He did PHP and then he stepped down to IOP and he worked with one of our clinicians, Sasha, individually as well as the rest of the team. He graduated after probably about 12 or 13 weeks. He received a certificate, and he would send Sasha pictures on her work phone showing that he got it framed and how excited he was. And just last week, we got an announcement for his high school graduation. And on the announcement, he wrote about how we at Alis helped save his life. He never thought he’d make it to the age of 18.
There was a kiddo that I had on my caseload that came in who had been through some really significant trauma and was struggling with some pretty severe depression, anxiety, self-harm urges, and suicidal ideation. And when I met with him on day one, I remember him saying to me, I don’t even know why I’m here anymore. I just feel so hopeless. I don’t know why my mom is forcing me to be here. I don’t think I can do this. Just so much hopelessness and I could feel the pain that he was experiencing. And at the same time, I also knew like, I know you can do this even if you don’t believe that you can. But in that moment, he was just so overwhelmed by everything that he had been through and the hopelessness that he was experiencing. And, you know, I didn’t know exactly how it was going to go with him. But even when he was really, really struggling with those symptoms, he showed up mind, body, soul every single day. And as he worked his way through the program, I saw more and more of him come out and he truly became a leader in the community. He would raise his hand. Hey, I know this concept. I want to explain it to the group. I want to show you all that we can not only use these things, but we can actually feel better when we use them. and just really tapping into all of his strengths. When new kids would come in that were maybe in a similar place that he was, he would go up to them, introduce himself, say, “Hey, this place isn’t so scary. I know you don’t wanna be here, but you got this, and let me know what you need.” It’s like the hopelessness and the depression and anxiety. It’s still there. It’s not all the way gone, but he’s able to relate to it in a different way and hold space for positivity and hopefulness and joy again. and he’s truly blossomed into himself. And now when this kiddo’s coming back to alumni, they are just a rock star. They are like getting all A’s in school. They’re gonna go into a forensic psychology program in college. They’re tapping into all of their interests again. And hearing that and getting that shared with me again is like the best thing I could ever ask for.
You might be feeling really, really hopeless right now. You might feel like no one understands who you are. You’re probably in a lot of pain. You might not know who to turn to, where to go. Here at Alis, you’re going to have a team of people who are here to show you that not only can you get better, but you can actually feel really, really good and life can feel worth living. I understand why they’re scared and why they’re apprehensive. It’s very understandable. You don’t want to be removed from everything you know, from everyone you know, and you don’t know what’s gonna happen to you. But I would also say that maybe the state of hopelessness and fear is because they feel like they’re alone and they don’t think anyone understands or that they’re the only ones who go through this. And so, I would invite them to come in and just see what this is about. – You owe it to yourself to try something you haven’t tried before, and this could be the answer. Feel it in your gut when you try something new, if you think it’s working for you or not. And if it is, awesome. And if it’s not, ask for something else. And there’s always someone that’s gonna be an advocate for you to find a resource that makes the most sense for you. – Recovery is absolutely possible. It’s a process and it’s, we want to work with you to help you on this journey, to help give you words to the feelings that you’re feeling, to help give you the support that you need that you may not have gotten in the past. We want to be able to help show you how this journey can be fun, informative, and supportive.
We accept Medicaid, all forms of Medicaid in the state of Colorado. And again, that was part of our initial mission about how do we serve those that may be underserved in our community.
Medicaid is lovely and wonderful and really an amazing resource for our families because it covers everything 100%. Being able to take that burden off the families to say you can get access to this level of support and not pay a dime is a huge weight off of their shoulders so they don’t have to worry about it. So, we can try to either prevent hospitalizations or prevent further hospitalizations and try to just help the kiddo with where they’re at.
We accept commercial insurance. Also, we will work with the parent and either provide resources or create a payment plan if some of their co-pays on the commercial insurance are too high.
A big question is transportation that we get all the time. – We have resources available to help with transportation until they can find ways to be transported to program. And that is not something that other programs do.
Behavioral health is such a human-based part of the system. It’s more than just selling a product. It’s more than just selling a service. Like you’re really being an integral part of someone’s life. – Mission is how do we get kids into services?
Seeing kids come in in this place where they maybe again, have lost themselves or are really struggling with symptoms of depression or anxiety. It’s really hard to be in that space. And as clinicians, like we feel that pain with them and we also hold hope for them when they can’t. So just the process of seeing a kiddo come in on day one, not knowing what to do, where to go, who’s a safe person, and who’s not, to seeing a kiddo come back in those same doors in our alumni program and be a different kiddo. It is so cool to see kids blossom and their confidence come through. And so many times kids start, again, tapping into these parts of themselves that may have felt lost and taken by the depression or anxiety. So, seeing creativity and light and joy come through a kiddo is exactly why I got into this work.
And Alis does so much to get the kid there, but it’s also coming from within the kid. And as they build that confidence within themselves, they recognize, hey, I’m the one doing this work. I’m the one who got myself to this space. And as we see that, more and more of the kiddo just shines through. and to be able to walk alongside so many amazing kids and see them just flourish is what, I mean, it’s my reason for being. It’s like what gets me up every day.
A big question is, you know, how long is the program? And the answer is, it’s based on clinical necessity. So, every kid’s going to come in for that assessment. We’re going to make a level of care recommendation. To answer the question though, PHP is generally three to four weeks long. IOP is usually about eight weeks long. And within that time, our primary focus initially is working on creating a therapeutic relationship or rapport we call it. Also working on basic coping skills, helping kids put words to feelings. And so then once a kid completes treatment, it’s very important for us to celebrate their success. We have graduation, we do fun things for that. And then a kid may come back and that absolutely does not mean that they have failed. that just means they need a tune-up or they are in a position where they’re ready to explore something else that’s happened in their past or a trigger that occurred at school like a breakup or something like that.
The issue that parents see is we’re going to miss a lot of school and the question I usually ask is are they going to school in the first place? How much school are we missing because of these mental health challenges? How many days are we missing? Are we not being not able to go to a full day of school, things like that. And so, once we kind of have that discussion of kind of the reality of the situation, it is an easier conversation to have about, you know, let’s take a step back. And so, we’re able to go back to school and be successful.
Guardians or families may think that once my kid goes to treatment, they’re cured and they’re done. That’s simply not the way things occur. It is going to be something that generally one of the adolescents have to continue to work on. – We’re gonna do check-ins each time we see you. We’re gonna have weekly meetings. We’re gonna understand what it is that’s going on. And so we’re gonna make sure you’re in the right place at the right time for as long as you need to.
There can be statements or assumptions made that because you’re mentally ill, you’re incapable of doing certain things, you’re incapable of going to college or having a job. They’re often judged and misjudged. So, it’s really working to educate people on what mental health is and how can we, in providing quality care and being advocates outside of this wall, help provide that information and guidance to families. The goal is also to be able to create a program that we can extend into other states or different parts of Colorado. Mental health is important. It is as important as if someone is, if they have diabetes or a heart condition or something like that.
Teens have a lot of developmentally appropriate things that they do experience, engage in, that for people who are not teens could be pathological. So, for example, teens are very impulsive. That’s just part of being a teen. Teens are very influenceable by their peers, right? Teens have a lot of influence and dynamics with their parents, with their school system, which in adulthood you’re not going to have a family system that impacts the individual. There are experiences that teens go through that have an emotional impact on them. So, say a school dance, say sports, let’s say the normal growing up and doing relationships, doing friendships, doing academics. For some kids it’s hard. For kids who have mental health needs it’s even harder but then telling apart what is normal, what is what requires greater attention and when we require that greater attention what kind of attention is it and so knowing what is typical for an adolescent helps us identify what is it that our specific adolescent needs and what do we put in place to further support them
