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How Parents Can Support a Teen Returning Home After Residential Treatment

When a teenager completes residential treatment, it’s a time filled with both hope and uncertainty. You may feel relieved to see your child returning home, yet anxious about how to maintain the progress they made in treatment. These mixed emotions are completely normal.

At SunCloud Health, we’ve walked alongside hundreds of families during this transition. What we know for sure is that healing doesn’t end at discharge—it simply enters a new phase. The support your teen receives at home plays a crucial role in sustaining recovery and building confidence for the future.

Below are practical, compassionate ways parents and caregivers can support a teen’s continued healing after residential care.

1. Create Structure and Predictability

After weeks or months of structured days in residential treatment, returning to an unstructured home environment can feel overwhelming for teens.

Establish consistent routines that promote stability and reduce anxiety:

    • Keep predictable meal and snack times (especially important for eating disorder recovery).
    • Set regular sleep and wake times.
    • Help your teen plan daily activities like therapy sessions, schoolwork, and downtime.

Consistency doesn’t mean rigidity. It means clear, supportive boundaries that communicate safety and care.

2. Stay Engaged in Ongoing Treatment

Discharge doesn’t mean treatment stops. Your teen’s outpatient team—therapist, psychiatrist, dietitian, and family therapist—will continue to play key roles in recovery.

Make sure appointments are scheduled and attended, and stay in touch with the team about how your teen is adjusting. Attend family sessions when invited, and ask how you can best support treatment goals at home.

Remember: your continued participation models commitment and stability.

3. Communicate with Compassion, Not Control

Teens returning from residential care often need space to apply new coping skills and rebuild trust. It’s natural to want to monitor everything—but try to focus more on open, nonjudgmental communication rather than surveillance.

Instead of “Are you doing what you’re supposed to?” try “How are you feeling about being back home?” or “What’s been hardest about this transition?”

Your willingness to listen, without immediately fixing or judging, helps your teen feel safe being honest, which is essential for relapse prevention and emotional healing.

4. Focus on Progress, Not Perfection

Recovery isn’t a straight line. There will be good days and setbacks. What matters most is progress over time, not immediate perfection.

Celebrate small victories—completing therapy homework, eating with the family, handling stress without old behaviors—and remind your teen that setbacks don’t erase progress.

Try to avoid harsh consequences or shame if challenges arise; instead, loop in the treatment team and revisit what supports might need adjusting.

5. Maintain a Recovery-Supportive Environment

The home environment can make or break the transition process. A few simple adjustments can reduce triggers and reinforce healthy habits:

    • Remove or limit access to substances, alcohol, or triggering items.
    • Keep the household meal atmosphere calm and positive.
    • Model healthy coping behaviors—talk openly about emotions, manage stress visibly, and take care of your own well-being.
    • Encourage balanced activities: rest, movement, social connection, and creative outlets.
       

Your actions communicate more powerfully than your words. Modeling recovery-oriented living shows your teen that healing is possible and sustainable.

6. Practice Self-Care as a Parent

Supporting a teen in recovery can be emotionally demanding. It’s important that you have your own outlets for support, whether that’s therapy, a parent group, or trusted friends who understand what you’re going through.

When you care for your own mental and emotional health, you show your teen that recovery is a lifelong, shared commitment—not a one-time event.

7. Stay Connected to the Residential Program

Many treatment centers, including SunCloud Health, offer aftercare planning and family support resources following discharge. Stay in touch with your teen’s primary therapist or case manager for guidance. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you notice early warning signs like withdrawal, changes in eating or sleep patterns, or emotional distress. Early intervention helps prevent setbacks from escalating into crisis.

The Transition Is Part of the Healing

Returning home after residential treatment is both a milestone and a new beginning. With patience, empathy, and consistent support, families can help teens continue the hard work of recovery while rebuilding trust and connection.

At SunCloud Health, we believe families are not just part of the process—they’re essential partners in healing. Our team provides ongoing support for parents and caregivers navigating this important transition, helping ensure that recovery remains sustainable long after discharge.

If your teen is preparing to transition home or you’d like to learn more about family support at SunCloud Health, contact us today.

Learn More
Rachel Collins, LCSW
Site Director of Northbrook PHP and IOP

Rachel Collins, LCSW, is the Site Director of SunCloud Health’s Northbrook Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs for both adolescents and adults. Rachel earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and went on to complete her master’s degree in social work from Michigan State University. She has since worked in a wide range of settings, including inpatient treatment, PHP/IOP programs, therapeutic group homes, and private practice. Rachel specializes in treating trauma (using Cognitive Processing Therapy) and anxiety, practicing through a relational, compassionate, and client-centered lens. She is passionate about creating a therapeutic space in which clients feel safe and able to explore various parts of themselves with curiosity as opposed to judgement. In addition to her leadership and clinical work, she is passionate about creating art, and learning about the intersection between creativity and mental health.

Kayla Corirossi, MA, LCSW
Site Director, Naperville PHP/IOP (Adolescents & Adults)

Kayla Corirossi, MA, LCSW, is the Site Director of SunCloud Health’s Naperville Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs for adolescents and adults. She brings extensive experience working with individuals across the lifespan, including adolescents, adults, and geriatric populations, and specializes in the treatment of mood disorders, trauma, substance use, family systems, forensic populations, and individuals in crisis.

Kayla has worked in a wide range of clinical and community settings, including community-based interventions, police crisis response, correctional facilities, inpatient treatment, PHP/IOP programs, and with vulnerable and underserved populations. In addition to her clinical and leadership work, she is passionate about providing mental health education and advocacy within the community.

Kayla earned her Bachelor’s degree with a double major in Psychology and Sociology from Aurora University and went on to complete her Master’s degree in Forensic Social Work, also at Aurora University. Her clinical approach is evidence-based, compassionate, trauma-informed, and integrative, emphasizing collaboration and individualized care.

Driven by a personal mission to meet individuals where they are, Kayla is committed to helping clients feel safe, supported, and understood. She strives to create a natural and empathetic healing environment while ensuring individuals from all backgrounds and identities know they are not alone and have access to meaningful resources and support.

Elizabeth E. Sita, MD
Medical Director of Adult Services

Dr. Elizabeth E. Sita, MD, is a Board Certified psychiatrist specializing in the care of patients with eating disorders. She completed her undergraduate training at the University of Chicago and graduated with Highest Honors. She then earned her medical degree at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and was recognized with the Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Psychiatry. She subsequently completed residency with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University, where she was elected Chief Resident and received the Resident Psychiatrist Leadership & Service Award.
Upon completing her training, Dr. Sita came to Ascension Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital, where she served as Assistant Medical Director of the Center for Eating Disorders and Director of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Services before transitioning to lead the new inpatient eating disorder unit as Medical Director of Eating Disorder Services at Ascension Saint Joseph Hospital – Chicago. In these roles, she has cared for a multitude of adolescents and adults struggling with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and other eating disorders as well as severe, cooccurring mood, trauma, personality, and substance use disorders.
Dr. Sita has been recognized throughout her training and practice for a commitment to excellence in patient care and for her ability to engage patients in their most challenging moments. Her passions include the care of treatment-resistant eating and mood disorders as well as questions of medical capacity and end-of-life decision making.
She believes that, first and foremost, human connection is key to mental health and well-being and strives to share this philosophy in each and every patient encounter. She is excited to bring her expertise to SunCloud Health as the Medical Director of Adult Services!
 
VIDEO: Meet Elizabeth E. Sita, MD, Medical Director of Adult Services


 https://youtu.be/JbmELh2UGXE

Lacey Lemke, PsyD
Assistant Vice President of Clinical Services

Dr. Lacey Lemke (she/her) is a licensed clinical health psychologist with specialized expertise in the treatment of eating disorders and the practice of medical and health psychology. She completed her doctoral training in clinical psychology with a Primary Care emphasis at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Lemke went on to complete both her predoctoral clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship through Ascension Health, where she gained advanced training working with individuals experiencing eating disorders and self-injurious behaviors, as well as within pediatric subspecialty settings including endocrinology, neurology, and adolescent medicine.

Dr. Lemke is deeply committed to providing evidence-based, compassionate care and collaborates closely with interdisciplinary teams to ensure comprehensive treatment. Her professional mission is to support patients in achieving their fullest potential by guiding them to the most appropriate level of care and empowering them to make meaningful, sustainable progress toward improved health and well-being.

VIDEO: 2. Meet Lacey Lemke, PsyD.

https://youtu.be/iKQeU9s5U2k?rel=o