Intensive outpatient program

Dr. Krause is a double board-certified clinical psychologist, Bronze Star recipient, and former chief of behavioral health at Fort Bragg, where she led the Army's largest behavioral health program overseeing mental health services for thousands of soldiers and their families.

So she now applies that crisis expertise to adolescent care, helping parents understand when IOP or PHP may be the right level of support between weekly therapy and hospitalization.

I think you're really going to love what she has to share with you today.

what's up parents and teens it's me leslie and welcome to the healthy teen life podcast where we cover teen and college age young adult health and wellness topics i'm so excited to be spending this time with you and if you're new to the podcast then thank you and welcome to the healthy teen life it's always really great to have new friends join us I know you have a lot going on in your life, so I think it's really cool that you're taking your time to listen and learn something new that I hope will help you live healthier and happier, even if it's just a tiny bit that I've done my job.

So what you're saying is group therapy does shift that dynamic and then also the frequency of when you're meeting.

It does.

And yeah, Some of the more specialized types of group care, the technical names for them are intensive outpatient programs, IOP, and partial hospitalization programs, PHP, which is kind of a misnomer because there's no hospital involved.

You just get the same amount of hours of care that you would at a hospital.

It's known as day treatment.

And then from there, stepped down to IOP, so intensive outpatient.

So in total, we probably had her about 90 days.

And in that time, I did work with her directly.

Outpatient therapy, weekly sessions, works when a teen can still attend school and keep basic routines.

An IOP steps up from there.

It's several hours a day on scheduled treatment days while the teen still lives at home.

And it's recommended when someone needs more than weekly therapy, but not a full day of programming.

They work, and there's data behind it.

PHP treatment has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression symptoms for adolescents both with and without suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

On the IOP side, adolescents treated showed significant improvement across measures of depression, suicidal ideation and behavior, and non-suicidal self-injury.

And separately, one 2025 outcomes report found that 96% of IOP graduates said they felt more equipped to face their fears after finishing the program.

[laughs] Maybe, and not Amsterdam.

"I need to go somewhere." So I just called this like random IOP.

They, they took me-

What's IOP?

Intensive outpatient.

Wow.

I mean, I don't know.

Do you know what IOP is? No.

I was thinking, "You're lying to me just to get our money," and my daughter's life is at stake, and it was just so upsetting.

So fortunately, we were usually able to find effective treatment, and over the next six years she was in, uh, several different residential centers.

She went to IOPs, she went to sober living for extended periods.

And our, our story has a really positive ending, because she has now been in recovery for 13 years and has been able to completely turn her life around.

She has-

I did 90 days of what they call res and PHP, which is partial hospitalization patient, I believe.

And then after that, you do what's called IOP, which is intensive outpatient.

IOP is normally done at a halfway house and you go to groups.

Little by little, they give you a little more freedom.

You eventually find yourself a job.

You start trying to live a normal life.

You go to meetings, groups, et cetera, therapy.

All in all, I was 90 days, like I said, resident PHP, 90 days IOP, although they had PHP IOP.