by Kelli Waite, LMSW, Director of Clinical Services, Rose Hill Center
At Rose Hill Center, we welcome people with a range of mental health conditions, but four of the most common challenges our residents experience are schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. We often care for people with dual diagnoses. For example, our residents may have borderline personality disorder and autism spectrum disorder, or bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Treating the whole person means understanding their unique condition and approaching treatment and recovery with structure and interventions in a supportive setting. Rose Hill’s structured residential care programs focus on the three Rs: Remediation, Restoration, and Reconnection.
- Remediation requires a calm, predictable environment, giving the person space to stabilize, sleep, engage in physical activity, and adjust medication needs.
- When ready for restoration, they can begin to regulate their emotions, join a therapeutic work crew, and figure out who they are as a person. People rebuild relationships and transition to managing their own lives.
- The last stage is reconnection—with friends, family, and their community outside of Rose Hill. Starting with a small community, reconnection grows to encompass larger circles.
Most residents move fluidly throughout the three Rs, and our team and our residents offer space and time for important adjustments.
By living, working, and being part of the safe environment of our residential rehabilitation program, individuals learn coping and social skills. When they attempt to use them, they may fail and can go back to process what happened and make changes. There is no risk of getting fired from a job, kicked out of an apartment, or losing a partner or friend. We take the guilt and shame away from making mistakes and replace it with encouragement, coaching, and the opportunity to try again and continue learning.
The majority of our residents with these diagnoses have already experienced many different kinds of treatment, and most have been hospitalized multiple times. They often don’t think treatment will work for them. Over time in our program and residential facility, they begin to trust our providers and themselves. Our goal is for residents to learn skills and understand how to implement them in a lasting way, then achieve a comfortable level of independence and autonomy.
About the author: Kelli Waite, LMSW, has been a mental health social worker since 2006 and part of the Rose Hill Center team since 2012. In 2023, she took on the role of Director of Clinical Services. Passionate about dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), she is a trained DBT therapist. She holds a bachelor’s degree (LBSW) from Saginaw Valley State University and a master’s degree (LMSW) from Michigan State University, both in social work.
