icipate in a wide variety of therapies. These include: (1) Family therapy which focuses on family issues in the daily life of the adolescent; (2) Group Therapy given on a daily basis toward the objective of strengthening the adolescent's awareness of self, attitudes, family and other interpersonal relationships; (3) Supplemental Group Experiences which focus on diverse issues such as assertion training, practical living skills, sexuality, and values clarification; (4) Occupational Therapy which includes guidance and counseling sessions related to the adolescent's vocational goals; and (5) Multifamily group therapy which is designed to orient the teen and his/her family for the adolescent's reentry into society.
The facility is relatively small with 42 beds; however, the patient to staff ratio is high. There is a total of 95 professionals on staff. These include psychiatrists, psychologists, program directors, clinical service directors, psychiatric social workers, chemical dependency therapists, specialized registered nurses, recreational therapists, and certified special education teachers. The diversity of on-staff professionals reflects the hospital's use of a multi-disciplinary or team approach to treatment. It should be noted that while the facility treats adolescent law violators sentence to be there by the Courts, it also provides treatment for a variety of other adolescent groups including many who are there strictly for psychiatric problems. These other patient groups include paranoid schizophrenics, those with schizo-affective disorders, psychotic patients, manic depressives, patients with borderline personalities and patients with antisocial personalities.
The researcher/observer has worked at Crossroads hospital for three summers in the full-time position of Psych Aide. In addition, during the school year, the researcher worked on an on-call basis for the hospital which resulted in an average of one to t...