Treatment

The Barrington Psychiatric Center (BPC) offers a time-limited psychotherapy for traumatic disorders that focuses on restoring patients to their baseline level of functioning as quickly as possible.

Based on sound research and trauma theory principles, the basic assumption underlying the BPC treatment model is that if a patient (in an acute state of dysfunction) is provided psychotherapy that is timely, focused, and based on trauma theory, then he/she will respond positively. The keys to such treatment lie in these key ingredients: Establishing the treatment focus through an initial treatment evaluation, the patient’s current emotional state and pre-existing social and psychological functioning is assessed to determine whether the patient is in need of psychological treatment and whether or not the patient is temporarily disabled from work. Information on the patient’s past functioning is obtained in order that the treatment focuses only on issues stemming from the current psychiatric injury and not on resolving pre-existing depressive, anxiety or personality disorders.

Barrington’s time-limited treatment ranges from several weeks to six months, with an average duration of approximately three or four months. Many of the cases treated at the Barrington involve Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (due to the experiencing or witnessing of a life threatening event - robbery, explosion, or other industrial accident) which requires that treatment focuses on resolving the patient’s initially overwhelming feelings of shame, fear, and rage stemming from the experience of the traumatic event.

This time-limited treatment can only achieve positive results if it stays focused on the treatment goal of resolving the work-related psychiatric injury. Patients often come to treatment with other pre-existing diagnoses or personality features. If the treating therapist loses treatment focus and begins to work in resolving the long-standing difficulties, then the treatment becomes complicated and results in a long, unproductive psychotherapy process. Barrington therapists are trained to remain focused on the current treatment in order to quickly alleviate the patient’s symptoms and return him/her to work as soon as possible.