Maximizing learning when designing and implementing exposures for clients with debilitating anxiety and OCD is well documented.  Balancing the teaching of skills and acceptance with reducing the fear response seems to predict the most successful treatment outcomes.

Here at Mountain Valley Treatment Center, located in New Hampshire’s White Mountains Region, we embody this practice of maximizing exposure opportunities for our co-educational adolescent and emerging adult residents during their 90-day residential treatment.  Focusing the psychoeducation, design, and execution of individualized exposures on campus and in nearby communities optimizes the inhibitory learning process while reducing fear without the emphases being solely on fear reduction or habituation.

Mountain Valley’s CBT-based ERP curriculum and therapeutic milieu consists of individual, group and family therapy along with a holistic experiential education curriculum focused on mindfulness, environmental stewardship, recreation, and health and wellness.  Residents co-design their treatment and exposure plans, participate in individual therapy, thematic group therapy, and specific ERP focused groups.  ERP specific groups consist of psycho-education, hierarchy development, individual exposure practice – interoceptive and in-vivo – and group review.

Be sure to follow Mountain Valley on Instagram and Facebook to see how we are implementing ERP work in our unique environment.

Don Vardell, Executive Director