Psychiatry

Therapeutic recreation is a skilled service that is offered to youth in an individual or group setting. The purpose of therapeutic recreation is to improve your child’s health and well-being through leisure-based activity. Youth receive a full evaluation and an individualized treatment plan specific to recreational therapy to assist in their successful community re-integration. Services are provided by professionals who are certified, registered, or licensed to provide therapeutic recreation.

Therapeutic Recreation Includes:

• Group therapy
• Individual therapy
• Special events/outings

Our occupational therapists  assess whether occupational therapy could help a child address difficulties with completing daily and routine tasks, interacting with peers and staff, effectively managing frustration and mood changes, and organizing thoughts for effective problem solving.

Our occupational therapy program uses an activity-based approach to highlight areas of strength and engage the child in functional and age-appropriate tasks. This increases independence in self-care, social skills, leisure activities, coping skills, cognition and sensory processing.

The Division of Psychiatry provides educational services in a structured, safe environment for all students as they undergo their mental health treatment.

Staffed by teachers from Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), our educational programs function on a traditional school schedule and are provided to all residential patients.

Educational Services We Provide:

• Initial educational assessment and collaboration with the treatment team to develop appropriate educational treatment goals
• Facilitation of student work provided by the child’s home school district, or instruction to work toward student IEP goals and objectives and Ohio academic standards
• Differentiated instruction
• Weekly input to the multidisciplinary treatment team from the educational perspective
• Coordination of IEP meetings with the  parent or guardian, home school district and all other agencies involved with treatment
• Coordination of school transitions at the end of the patient’s residential stay

A psychiatric diagnosis is often not the only problem a child is battling at the time of admission. Patients are evaluated upon admission and, if a chemical abuse problem is identified, we offer therapy. depending on the child’s needs. Our counselors work hand in hand with patients and their families to address addiction or drug-abuse behaviors during treatment stays for co-existing psychiatric disorders.

Our staff provides families with a better understanding of the treatment process, and we help youth understand the effect drugs have on their development and future problems that can occur with continued use.

Learn more about the chemical dependency education that we offer.

Children and adolescents with psychiatric diagnoses often have difficulty with communication or social language use. Our speech-language pathologists provide treatment to help your child address communication problems such as difficulty expressing emotions, using appropriate language to handle stressful emotions, and using body language and facial expressions to communicate nonverbally.

Speech-language therapy may be conducted in individual or group sessions, depending on your child’s individual needs. For more information on speech-language therapy, visit the Division of Speech Pathology at Cincinnati Children’s.

The chaplain offers spiritual and/or religious help to patients, families and staff. The chaplain understands an individual's beliefs and values. 

The chaplain leads group activities to help patients embrace his/her beliefs and values that are important to them. The goal of these services is to help a patient feel comfortable in talking about and sharing his/her religious and spiritual beliefs with other patients, staff, and as an individual.

A big part of what the chaplain works with patients on is dealing with loss. A loss could be a change in the family, or the loss of a friend of pet. The chaplain holds grief groups to help patients heal from the loss.