CLINICAL

Our Approach to Therapy

An innovative and collaborative clinical team is at the core of Pacific Quest’s therapeutic approach. With a deep and varied experience base, the team creates individualized treatment plans that are client-focused and augmented by the entire clinical team’s expertise. With a minimum of four therapy days each week, students are supported by primary therapists, support therapists, group therapy, and program therapists.

Diagnostic Library
Individual Therapy

Every student and family is assigned a primary individual therapist to lead each journey from beginning to end. Therapists are assigned through a collaborative process between the admissions team, referring professionals, application review, and Clinical Director.

Primary therapists meet with their students at least twice a week and facilitate weekly family therapy calls. Therapists work with an average caseload of just five students. This allows the primary therapist to collaborate with the wellness, psychiatric, program guide, and home teams to ensure an individualized and meaningful experience every moment outside of regular sessions.

Support Therapy

Individualized treatment plans often draw from the experience and expertise of our entire team. As a result, we often add support therapists to a student’s experience to augment their journey with a particular therapeutic lens or intervention. These support therapy sessions are in addition to a student’s regular therapy sessions and include EMDR, Sandplay Therapy, and range of evidence based practices.

Group Therapy

Pacific Quest’s therapeutic approach posits that a safe and supportive community is the cornerstone to a successful treatment experience. Our team facilitates a minimum of two group therapy sessions each week, creating space for students to be exposed to various perspectives, insights, and skills. Groups can be topic or process-driven and provide a platform to ensure a supportive and safe community experience. PQ holds these group and peer group discussions daily to help our students address goals, explore issues, and receive constructive feedback.

Program Therapists

PQ maintains a team of program therapists who are credentialed clinicians that facilitate extra individual and group work an additional four days a week.

Psychological Testing

Pacific Quest coordinates independent psychological and psycho-educational testing with a number of licensed psychologists. These experts specialize in evaluating students within our unique context and environment.

Cognitive and academic testing  provides valuable insight into your learning profile, including cognitive strengths and weaknesses. It can also help rule out the possibility of learning differences, which (when undetected) can contribute to emotional distress.

Personality testing — gives us insight into your particular style of coping skills, self-appraisal, and interpersonal relationships, while also clarifying diagnostic issues.

Pacific Quest can also provide several options for testing based on your individual needs. For example, testing can be tailored to issues of learning differences, traumatic brain injury, and autism spectrum disorders.

Example Evidence Based Approaches Used at Pacific Quest:
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
  • Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
  • Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
  • Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Therapy
  • Expressive Arts Therapies
  • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
  • Family Systems
  • Mindfulness-Based Practices
  • Motivational Interviewing
  • NMT Brain Mapping
  • Recovery Management
  • Sandplay Therapy
  • Somatic/Body-Based Therapies
  • Trauma-Focused CBT
  • Trauma Resiliency Model
  • 12-Step Recovery

We have the opportunity to work with the parents whose students have gone through the program and transitioned into long-term care. The parents consistently share that the experience at PQ was significant and enriching not only for their young person but the parents and ultimately the entire family. They feel supported and included throughout the experience and appreciate both the concepts as well as the practical tools they can practice and continue to use.

-Barbara C