Common Mental Health Therapy Modalities

At Sequoia Behavioral Health, we make sure all of our client’s treatment needs are being met. This personalized approach doesn’t mean that we just choose programming based on the issues that brought you in. It also means we holistically look at your history, the severity of the problems you want to solve, and your goals for treatment.

Each program caters to different kinds of clients and allows our staff to truly individualize every person’s treatment. Nearly everyone can benefit when they have access to different options for care.

What Are Modalities in Therapy?

Therapy modalities are different techniques, approaches, and processes that are used to improve a patient’s well-being. It doesn’t take a long search to learn that there are plenty of modalities to go around.

Examples of therapy modalities include:

Cognitive behavioral health (CBT)
Eye movement desensitization reprogramming (EMDR)
Recreational therapy
Narrative therapy
Family therapy

Each of these modalities take a different approach to offer healing, and are helpful in different situations. However, when modalities are used in tandem within a holistic program, they can be even more successful.

Image: a closeup of a person's forearms resting on a wooden railing over a forest lake. Text: a Therapy modality is a theraputic tool that is used to elp someone overcome, manage, or recovery from a mental health struggle.

Mental Health Therapy Modalities: What They Are and Why There Are So Many

Throughout the world of mental health, there are a lot of modalities available. This is because mental health is an ever-growing field, everyone’s different, and modalities are designed with specific needs in mind.

The multitude of modalities can be categorized in various ways and often have some kind of overlap. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy exists within the list of behavioral therapies and cognitive therapies because it uses the connection between thought and behavior to help people change.

No image, text: therapy modality groupings are psychodynamic, humanistic, recreational and experiential, trauma-based, and integrative

Psychodynamic Modalities

Therapies within the psychodynamic modality are focused on understanding unconscious influences on someone’s life. This includes childhood experiences and other life events that have affected someone’s thinking.

Psychodynamic therapies are one of the oldest forms of therapy and are still effective today.

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Humanistic Modalities

These kinds of therapy are focused on helping people achieve their potential and find meaning in life. These kinds of therapy often help people find ways to help others and themselves. Most of these therapies ride on the idea that decisions should be made for the welfare of everyone.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), is an action-oriented therapy that helps people accept who they are and change for the better. All of this is done with the goal of living a fulfilling life.

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Recreational and Experiential Therapies

Experiential and recreational therapies help people connect with each other and experience healing in new ways. Most of the therapies in this umbrella aren’t as understood scientifically as others. For example, we know that experiencing nature is good for mental health, but we don’t fully understand how.

Recreation has been a part of therapy for a long time. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of Sherlock Holmes, noticed the improvement recreation had on his mental health. This can include hiking, playing sports, cycling, and more.

Experiential therapy is slightly different because it focuses on team building and challenging patients with new and exciting things to do. This includes painting, drawing, acting, equine-assisted therapy, guided meditation, and a lot more.

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Trauma Therapy

All forms of therapy can take a trauma-informed approach. That means applying ways to better understand how trauma has affected someone’s life.

These forms of therapy are designed to treat trauma and trauma alone. This includes the effects of PTSD and life after a traumatic event.

Trauma affects the brain in more ways than one. It makes it hard to recall those events or memories without feeling intense emotions. Therapies like EMDR and somatic experiencing use the brain-body connection to treat trauma safely.

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Integrative Modalities

Integrative modalities combine different aspects from various sources. Often CBT, humanistic, and psychodynamic are brought together to offer a diverse therapy option.

Integrative models use theories and practices from a wide spectrum of ideas and often provide unique experiences for those who engage with it.

Relates Resources: Full Guide to Integrative Therapy

Mental Health Programs at Sequoia

At Sequoia Behavioral Health, we create mental health and addiction treatment programs that utilize various therapy modalities to offer a holistic healing process. Our programs are divided into 3 types of mental health programs:

Inpatient Treatment offers round-the-clock care and treatment during a 30-day stay at our residential facility. This is the kind of treatment program most people would expect from rehabilitation centers or addiction treatment centers.
Partial hospitalization program (PHP) is similar to inpatient treatment, but patients live at home. This program is six hours of counseling a day for five days a week. This programming offers patients flexibility.
Intensive outpatient program (IOP) is a lot like PHP in that patients don’t live in the facility. However, IOP includes counseling for three hours a day for either three or five days per week, depending on the programming.

These programs mix various therapies from individual, group, recreational, and experiential modalities to bring healing holistically.

Group Therapy

Group therapy modalities include multiple patients working together to better understand their mental health conditions. These modalities also include recreation, experiences, and group sound baths.

Sequoia Behavioral Health offers a plethora of group therapy that patients will go through with during their time in treatment.

Individual Therapy

Individual therapy is what most people think of when they think of therapy. A single patient talking with a trained therapist about their mental health struggles. Individual therapy is beneficial for several reasons including a personalized therapy experience.

Modalities included under the individual therapy umbrella include therapies like:

EMDR
Emotional freedom techniques
Narrative therapy
Somatic experiencing

While engaging with a mental health treatment plan, patients should look forward to meeting one-on-one with a therapist.

Psychiatric Care

Mental health problems often require some kind of medical intervention. These include antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers. These medications are very helpful for people struggling with certain mental health issues.

At Sequoia Behavioral Health we offer psychiatric care in more than one way.

Assessments and Diagnostics: You don’t have to be diagnosed before attending our programs. After walking through our doors we’ll walk you through the proper assessments to find the right treatment plans for you.
Medication Management: Our residents receive around-the-clock care. Our psychiatric team works with patients to find the correct medications for every client.

Psychiatric care is only a portion of a holistic treatment plan. While taking these medications, it’s important to attend therapies of many modalities. This will increase your chances of symptom reduction, management, and recovery.

Image: a sepia-toned picture of a person standing on the top of a mountain peak, overlooking a misty valley at sunset. Text: Clients at Sequoia Behavioral health are provided with a treatment program designed for their individual needs.

Other Programs

Other therapy modalities can include once-a-week counseling. This is a typical practice for most general mental health counseling.

These programs could mix different modalities, but they usually consist of one counselor and a patient working together to explore the patient’s mental health symptoms and find ways to combat them.

This kind of therapy is not offered at Sequoia Behavioral Health. We focus on addiction treatments and intensive programs.

Finding the Right Modality For You

Knowing what kind of therapy would be good for you is a difficult decision, especially if you don’t know all the available options.

The good news is you don’t have to decide on what kind of therapy is best for you. It’s recommended to get the expert help of a therapist or counseling to find what kind of modality is right for you.

Getting Treatment at Sequoia Behavioral Health

Sequoia is a mental health treatment facility that offers treatment for residents as well as outpatient options. When you get treatment with Sequoia Behavioral Health you’ll receive an assessment that will help us find the best therapy modalities for your needs.