Papers by Yellowbrick Leadership

Yellowbrick Residence

 

Yellowbrick is a private healthcare organization whose mission is to improve the lives of emotionally troubled young adults.  The Yellowbrick Consultation and Treatment Center provides comprehensive and integrated outpatient diagnostic and treatment services.  Yellowbrick Residence provides meaningful and pragmatically effective psychotherapeutic and rehabilitation treatment for those young adults who require a therapeutic residence as an anchoring context for personal growth.  The treatment process within all Yellowbrick programs aims at assisting individuals to:

• Experience self respect while acknowledging personal limitations;
• Engage self directed responsibility within the context of community membership;
• Develop and maintain mutually sustaining relationships;
• Develop expanding competence required for meaningful and purposeful living.

Yellowbrick Residence utilizes these organizing principles to inform the work of staff and residents.  A supported living experience in a semi-urban apartment provides the setting for treatment.  Within this setting, individuals address and take responsibility for their lives – past, present, and future.  In this context professionals provide intensive outpatient services tailored to individual needs through the Yellowbrick Consultation and Treatment Center.

Setting

Yellowbrick Residence is located on Sheridan Road, one block from Lake Michigan, in the City of Evanston on Chicago’s North Shore.  Evanston is a vibrant and diverse community with a population of 75,000 comprised of strong and active neighborhoods, thriving commercial and retail businesses and restaurants, and home to many young adults including students at Northwestern and Loyola University.  Public services and resources are excellent, and transportation to downtown Chicago by “El” is only blocks away.

Yellowbrick Residence is a 4 flat apartment building with 3 three-bedroom apartments and a fourth two- bedroom garden apartment with separate entrance where up to fifteen residents will live during their treatment.  There are Residence Resource Staff available at The Residence on a 24/7 basis providing a mature, supportive adult presence.  Additional community space is provided for group activities, leisure, and the office of Residence Resource Staff and administration.  While the Evanston community and surrounding neighborhood are quite safe, Yellowbrick employs keycard locks on all street access entrances and each individual apartment, an alarm system for police, fire, and 911, and a sprinkler system for fire protection.  There is ample parking on the well-lit and trafficked Sheridan Road.

Who Are The Residents At Yellowbrick?

Yellowbrick is prepared to work with a diverse population of individuals suffering from psychiatric disorders, developmental difficulties, and unsuccessful previous treatment experiences.  Prospective residents and their families must demonstrate motivation for treatment and a financial commitment to a minimum of four months length of stay.  Individuals who come to Yellowbrick are strongly encouraged to anchor their lives within Evanston/Chicago and draw on the continuing resources and relationships which Yellowbrick provides.

Yellowbrick is a potential treatment setting for individuals whose psychiatric difficulties impair daily functioning and/or derail developmental momentum.  Many individuals discharged from acute care settings require the continuity of an extended therapeutic residence where they can apply previous progress and further develop their internal resources and support system in Yellowbrick’s “real time” treatment model.  For many Yellowbrick residents, office treatment with brief or partial hospitalization interventions has been unable to sustain a level of self-integration and stability to enable them to create and implement a constructive life plan.  Persistence of symptomatic behaviors often rigidifies into insidious chronicity and disability, leaving the individual at risk for estrangement from family and personal demoralization.  Continued living at home under these circumstances further distorts developmental needs and strains family bonds already weary from the turmoil and pain of psychiatric illness.  A limited number of individuals may require a long term commitment to living in a Yellowbrick Residence at a reduced intensity of care to sustain the highest level of function and well-being.

Yellowbrick is appropriate for a diverse range of psychiatric disorders who share basic impairments of self-regulation and self-integration.  These include but are not limited to eating disorders, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and bipolar illness, and some psychotic conditions.  Personality problems related to loss, trauma or abuse, the emotionally distorting effect of learning or physical disability or childhood obesity, or other troubled experiences often affect a person such that treatment efforts that are not intensive, extended, and offering a spectrum of psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, rehabilitative, and community dimensions prove inadequate even when provided by skilled and experienced clinicians.  Yellowbrick was designed to reach out and engage these individuals.

Yellowbrick is not suitable for all individuals.  Developmental disorders with reduced intelligence or severe limitations in relationships would not benefit from Yellowbrick’s psychotherapeutic approach.  Individuals with histories of committing sexual abuse or violence and any crime involving trespass of physical safety to another person will be excluded.  Persons with a history of antisocial behavior and an incapacity for concern for others are not suitable for a setting which relies on the community relationships as a cornerstone for treatment.  Destructive impulse control problems such as promiscuity, rage attacks, lying and deception, shoplifting and other theft, lack of commitment to abstinence from alcohol and substances will be excluded or in jeopardy of administrative discharge.  Random breathalyzer and urine toxicology are employed.  Anyone bringing alcohol or substances into Yellowbrick will be subject to a treatment review process involving residents, professional staff, and the Medical Director which may result in administrative discharge. This will also apply to any behavior or other contraband that if misused presents a threat to the safety or integrity of the Yellowbrick or Evanston community.  Yellowbrick Residence prohibits smoking except in designated areas outside on grounds.