https://www.thehealingconnectioninc.org
The Healing Connection is a nonprofit eating disorder treatment center in Rochester, NY. They offer PHP, IOP, and outpatient to adolescents and adults of all genders, and will help out-of-town clients or families to find local lodging. Tutoring is available for free to adolescents in the PHP program during the school year. They also have an outpatient practice, which offers a variety of treatments including individual therapy, group therapy, medication management, and medical appointments, and which does not require an eating disorder diagnosis.
Starting in Spring 2023, they will be opening an eating disorder residential treatment center for adolescents of all genders, aged 12-18.
Updated reviews? Please post in comments below. You can check out the FAQ and Guidelines for suggested questions. Thank you!
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Update: Starting in Spring 2023, The Healing Connection will also offer the residential level of care in Rochester, NY to adolescents aged 12-18 of all genders.
More information here:
https://www.thehealingconnectioninc.org/residential-program
Ugh, this is SO incredibly frustrating! Yet another Residential program in New York that is inaccessible to a huge number of people! I’m thrilled to see more kids will be able to get help, but there are millions of adults who need it, too! There is literally no treatment available from Westchester County in NY all the way to Rochester. That’s a huge geographical gap and all of the treatment available is outpatient, anyway with no living accommodations.
Sorry for the rant, I just cannot stand how abysmal ED treatment is in New York. This is supposed to be the “epicenter” of the country, so to speak, and we can’t even offer its population proper medical care within its own state
I’m with you…it’s terrifying honestly feeling if I relapse hard….there are no options….like I’ve watched so many of my friends just die and specifically from a lack of access to treatment or care….medical neglect….I’m exhausted from advocating for access and at some point I’ll prob just give up….the fact that for so many one of the only options is in Colorado so we just have to give up our lives and move to Colorado….for months on end….one thing that is great is that most states don’t offer any options that aren’t res or IP to chronic sufferers but NY does seem to do OP options which I do think is good….there’s not a lot of effective treatment methods so forcing someone to live in a hospital for months when there’s not even effective treatments is pretty cruel. Having longer term OP options is better. There aren’t a lot of places that do that. It’s mostly just IP, res and then home to nothing. So if they actually developed a quality OP case management program with help for stepping up care somewhere (idk where since yeah there isn’t anywhere) but that would help.
I was at the Healing Connection in 2018/2019. The program is fantastic. I felt really connected with my primary therapist and the group therapists. The food is excellent as they have a chef that makes the meals and he buys the ingredients fresh each day. They do not give supplements, and if you are frequently not completing meals and snacks, they will recommend a higher level of care. The founder of the program is an amazing woman and does a couple groups a week with you. I also really liked the yoga therapist. I was very uncomfortable doing any type of exercise in front of anybody, and she made yoga actually enjoyable for me. I’m still friends with 2 of the women I was in program there with and we see each other a couple times a year when I visit. The dietitian, ***, can be quite intimidating, but she means well. Bathroom use is supervised and you are required to use the bathroom when you get to program in the morning before weigh ins. Then, you go into the office with the dietitian or therapist for weigh in and symptom checking. Then you do groups and such throughout the day and they have some “down time” at some point during the day. We usually played bananagrams on our down time. The group dynamics when I was there were excellent. Everybody really supported and rallied around each other. I would definitely use this program again, should I ever need more support.
Looking forward more recent reviews
Bumping this up, would really appreciate any recent review/thoughts on their experience, too.
Anyone been here recently at the new location?
anyone been here recently that could provide a review?
any recent reviews?
I was there for a little over two weeks back in April. They were changing a lot of the staff over while I was there, so that was a little difficult. I liked most of the staff. It costs $500 a day w/o insurance, but not many programs are affordable w/o insurance. They have an apartment that I think is two bedrooms, for those who are coming from out of the area. They definitely pick favorites as for who they fight for and who they don’t when your insurance is up. The food is excellent and you can get the recipes for any of them when you leave.
Weigh ins and random urine screenings are from 11:30 until 12. You also put on a whiteboard in the room how well you are feeling (scale of 1 to 10) and what your goal for the day is. You are allowed a glass of water after meals and snack if you finish all your food. There is challenge food for the snack on Wednesday. It is the same amount of points (calories) as a regular snack, but normally something sweeter like a piece of pie.
If you want an individual session, you often have to ask for it OR write about your problems in your journal (they read them once a week) and they’ll give you a session. They have mandatory family/couple sessions once a week along with a group family session on Tuesday nights. That is where parents/partners and sometimes friends come in and meet as one group with the patients and all the therapists. They have topics to discuss during each group and they rotate on a 6 week basis. So, if you are there for 7 weeks, you get the same group you had during your first week. Not many people stay past 6 weeks though.
3 weeks is considered the average stay. You do the following weeks meal plan on Thursday, so you find out it your points have been increased or decreased Thursday morning during weigh in. You start your new points on the weekend. If you aren’t coming in from inpatient or residential, they’ll start you at 33 and a half points (2250 calories) and then increase or decrease your points based on what your weight is. Don’t freak out about that! They watch weight carefully and if you aren’t on weight gain, they will lower your points quickly. However, they won’t change your points until after you have eaten all your food for the majority of the week. You are also allowed outside points once you eat all your food for a week.
They don’t do supplements; all your calories are either from juice, milk or food. You can have whatever you want on the weekends as long as it isn’t considered diet food. You have to write out your weekend meal plan on Thursday and by the latest of Thursday night so it can be checked on Friday.
If you want to know more about what food they have during the week, let me know.
*I would recommend this program to anyone in the area. It is 10x better then staying in outpatient. It isn’t the best program out there, but it is worth it if you go. You have to want to change to get something out of it and they put a lot of value in assertiveness. They want you to ask for help and point out where you need help. You will get a lot more out of the program if you do that.
When you leave, they will try to set you up with groups. They often try to get you into a DBT group through Strong Hospital but I haven’t heard of anyone who has actually gone to more then one or two meetings there.
If you can afford Ali’s Saturday group, go! You can’t go until after you are discharged but she is one of the group therapists and was a primary therapist there for a year, so she knows the program well.
You don’t know your weight. You have to see your doctor every other week while in program and they tell your doctor to weigh you backwards and not say your weight. The weight gain is individualized. They say about 2 pounds a week but sometimes if you gain faster, they won’t lower your points. They won’t add more points, but they won’t lower them. If you lose weight, they add points, so if you restrict or exercise too much, your points are added the day they find out. You might be allowed exercise, it depends on how well you are managing your symptoms. They don’t count walking “moderately” as exercise unless it causes you to lose weight. I haven’t heard of anyone being allowed to do anything more than walk for 30 minutes during program as their exercise.
They allow both men and women in the program, but they’ve only had two men in the program so far. I forget the minimum age, I want to say 12 and they allow any age up from that. If they have more than one adolescent in the group, they will separate them for some of the groups to accommodate for the different types of problems and lifestyles they have.
*Read the papers you sign at admission. There is one that says volunteers/interns can come into groups and those of us that glanced through the papers didn’t see it. That let an intern into a couple of groups until enough of us complained about her being there. I don’t know if there is a paper saying you will go to inpatient if they say you need to, but I wouldn’t recommend signing that if you don’t have to. I haven’t heard good things about the inpatient program they send people to, so if you can go somewhere else for a higher level of care, it might be worth it.
I just got out of here. It’s “okay”. Don’t bother going if you don’t have insurance- it’s insanely expensive. Basic tools to deal with stress and emotions are covered, but they don’t help you through any trauma. Some staff are downright awful, others are golden. The sorta rushed me through the process since my emotional stuff was so deep, and I still have symptoms as bad as when I went in. The food is GREAT though. It’s a good intermediate step.
I was in this program multiple times when it was a part of a hospital. The director and some staff are the same. Very basic tools to learn to delay and cope with urges.
Mary, I just wanted to respond to say that since the place has only been opened a little over a year, we may not have any people here who have gone through the program.
My daughter is also lactose intolerant and when she was in treatment (not there – elsewhere) they allowed her to substitute soy milk for dairy milk.
Being ‘worried about going’ is natural but the good news is that quality treatment can get you on the path to recovery.
My daughter was very ill with ED one year ago, and after a good course of treatment, she is doing well.
Best of luck to you!
Anyone been here? It opened a little over a year ago and I might be going there soon (in a month or so) as my parents will be paying what my insurance doesn’t cover and they don’t want me to be too far away from them. What is the food like? Are the therapists good? Is it a problem that I’m lactose intolerant? What is a normal day like? I’m so worried about going, I’ve never had treatment before.