Therapeutic Community
The primary goal of a Therapeutic Community (TC) is to foster personal growth. This is accomplished by changing an individual's lifestyle through a community of concerned people working together to help themselves. Our TC represents a highly structured environment with defined boundaries, both moral and ethical. We employ community-imposed sanctions and penalties as well as earned advancement of status and privileges as part of the recovery and growth process. Being part of something greater than oneself is an especially important factor in facilitating positive growth.
People in a TC are "residents" or "members," as in any family setting; they are not "patients," as in an institution. These members play a significant role in managing the TC and acting as positive role models for others to emulate. Members and staff act as facilitators emphasizing personal responsibility for one's own life and self-improvement. The members are supported, as well as serviced, by staff. There is a sharing of meaningful labor so that there is a true investment in the community, sometimes for the purposes of survival. Peer pressure is often the catalyst that converts criticism and personal insight into positive change.
High expectations and high commitment from both members and staff support this positive change. Insight into one's problems is gained through group and individual interaction, but in the TC, learning through experience, failing and succeeding, and experiencing consequences is considered to be the most potent influence toward achieving lasting change. Authority is both horizontal and vertical. We encourage the concept of sharing responsibilities and support the process of participation in decision-making when this is feasible and consistent with the philosophy and objectives of the TC. The TC emphasizes the integration of an individual within this community, and progress is measured within the context of that community against the community's expectations. It is this community, along with the individual, that accomplishes the process of positive change in its members. The tension created between the individual and this community eventually resolves in favor of the individual, and this transaction is taken as an important measure of readiness to move toward integration into a larger society.
Discovery Institute has been implementing treatment that finds its roots in the Therapeutic Community for more than thirty years. As time has passed, our clients have changed to a degree-and so have we. We take what we do very seriously, and we are always performing self-analysis to be sure that our clients are receiving the highest quality, and the most effective treatment available. For more information on Therapeutic Community Rehabilitation click here.