Supporting the mental health, Safety and wellbeing of women.
Recovering Safety was founded by McLean Hospital-trained psychiatrist, Dr. Amanda Sedgewick who specializes in women’s mental health, trauma and addiction. The outpatient clinic is named for the Recovering Safety group treatment model that was developed by Dr. Sedgewick in 2017, and subsequently piloted and studied at McLean Hospital. Recovering Safety is an 8-session, weekly, 60-min outpatient group for women who are survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) and who also struggle with problems related to substance use or have been diagnosed with substance use disorders (SUDs) and/or other mental health problems. The overall goal of this group is to provide an introduction to the concepts that lie at the intersection of IPV-induced trauma and SUDs and to encourage use of skills and self-care techniques to define and achieve goals around safety and sobriety. This includes concepts such as substance use and mental health coercion (Warshaw et al, 2014), self-care and relapse prevention techniques similar to those found in evidence-based treatments such as the Women’s Recovery Group (Greenfield, 2016) and Integrated Group Therapy (Connery and Weiss, 2011). Integrated throughout sessions 3-8 are skills from evidence-based behavioral therapies such as DBT (Linehan, 2014), CBT and also includes other useful concepts for treatment of PTSD such as grounding and the window of tolerance (Ogden, 2006).
Healing happens in a safe environment.
Our group programming provides an incredibly supportive space for women to share their stories and process their experiences. Services provided at our clinic are prioritizing safety, psychoeducation and skills support and our group discussions range widely covering topics relevant to women at all ages, stages and situations. The goal of this treatment is learn skills applicable to whatever your struggles may be so that you can bring the skills and knowledge you obtain back to your daily life to promote safety, empowerment and well-being.
What do we mean by safety?
Safety can be complicated for many women, and thus can mean different things to each one of us in different situations and at different stages of our lives. One of the goals of treatment is to learn and understand what it means to you. For some it could refer to relationships, and the difficulty of navigating and understanding others’ or our own behaviors; For others it could refer to our helpful and un-helpful coping skills and when and how we use them (substances, food, exercise, isolation, asking for help, etc.). For some it refers to how we care for ourselves, including how we think about ourselves (self-esteem). With each of these perspectives we can come to some understanding of safety in our minds, bodies and environments, and we can work towards maximizing our agency and acting with intention to grow smarter and stronger in our daily lives.
“I now see how owning our story and
loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”