Join us for this “pay what you can” webinar with Karen Minden and Victoria Creighton.

Karen Minden was the founder of an adolescent addiction and mental health treatment program in Ontario. Pine River Institute is unique in taking a developmental and family centred approach to helping teens whose lives are in a downward spiral with drugs, self-harm, running away, anxiety, depression. General failure to thrive. Opened in 2006, it was a departure from treatment as usual: psychotropics and a weekly visit to a psychiatrist. Dr. Victoria Creighton, a psychologist who had worked at a similar program in Montana, joined Pine River as Clinical Director in 2009. She had worked with Dr. John McKinnon, a Yale-trained psychiatrist who left managed practice to open a ranch dedicated to caring for troubled teens. He and his colleagues wondered what these adolescents, referred to the ranch with a plethora of DSM diagnoses and a cocktail of medications, had in common. Their “aha” moment came when an early childhood specialist on the team remarked that most of these off-the-rails teens were similar to toddlers in their stage of emotional development.

Karen and Victoria talk about the Maturity model for teen addiction treatment, and how the Family therapy model come into the picture, guided by Maria Gomori. They also ask whether the maturity model is a useful lens to look at adult mental health, particularly during the stress of the pandemic.