Avenues Counseling Center

Avenues Counseling Center, located in Saint Louis, Missouri, provides many avenues indeed for recovering from dual diagnosis conditions of substance use and mental health disorders. While their programs are all at the outpatient level of care, they offer plenty here to keep you busy and keep you on the right track of sobriety. Aside from their counseling and group sessions, they also offer intensive outpatient treatment for teens between the ages of 13 and 17.

Counseling for Adults with Addiction and More

Their counseling options stood out to me because they go way beyond the standard options like couples therapy and family therapy. They dive into things like dependency, grief and loss, post traumatic stress, eating disorders and body image, sexual identity, divorce, and even personality disorders. Many people can benefit from this because it’s such a vast array of options.

Teen Intensive Outpatient Program

When it comes to the teen intensive outpatient program I mentioned, the way it’s structured is very unique. It is a six week program that meets three days a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The teen meetings are from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., and there is open enrollment.

During the program, the family will participate in several family counseling sessions too. This includes the teen and their parent or caregiver. The caregiver is also expected to attend sessions individually apart from the teen, so this is considered a group effort for everybody in the family.

The curriculum is grounded in dialectical behavior therapy and is divided into different weeks that involve topics like safety planning and crisis response, distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulation, walking the middle path, and boundaries or self-advocacy.