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Summary: People from Orange County are going to San Diego for residential mental health treatment to take the time they need to heal and recover in a place that’s tailor-made for their health and wellbeing but not completely isolated from an environment that feel comfortable and familiar.

Key Points:

  • For people with serious mental illness, residential mental health treatment can be an essential step in the healing and recovery process.
  • People from OC travel to San Diego because they love being in Southern California, but need a break from LA.
  • San Diego is far enough away from home to relieve the pressures of home life, but not so far away that people feel totally disconnected from their family, friends, and the place they call home.
  • People from Orange County go to San Diego for residential mental health treatment because it feels familiar, but not identical, to the place they need time away from.

Why San Diego Instead of LA for Residential Mental Health Treatment?

When people are in San Diego, they have many of the things that make LA special, like the Pacific Ocean, beautiful coastal mountain ranges, and the lifestyle and ethos that make Southern California a great place to live. When people choose residential mental health treatment in San Diego, they get all that, but at the same time, they get time away from the specific environment where they experience significant mental health problems, and the components of their life that may exacerbate their symptoms and contribute to their ongoing mental health challenges.

In other words, it resembles home, feels like home in many ways, but at the same time, it’s not home, and far different than LA or the OC.

For people who need to get away from LA for treatment – but not too far away – San Diego can be the perfect choice. But we should address something at the core of this question, which is why people would want to go to residential treatment in the first place.

What Is Residential Treatment – and How Can It Help?

Residential treatment is an immersive form of mental health care that’s one step below, i.e. a step less immersive – than inpatient hospitalization, but two steps up from typical once a week or once every other week outpatient therapy.

Between typical outpatient treatment, you can find two levels of care:

Residential treatment picks up where the treatment options in outpatient treatment end, but before the necessity for inpatient hospitalization begins. While hospitalization is really more about stabilization for an acute mental health crisis than about mental health treatment itself, residential treatment is all about treatment and recovery.

Please understand hospitalization can be an essential, lifesaving step in the big picture of mental health treatment, but not everyone with a serious mental illness needs inpatient hospitalization.

However, for people with mental health symptoms that are very disruptive, and make participating in the basic activities of school, work, or family life impossible, then spending time in residential mental health treatment might be the best option.

When people choose residential treatment in a high-quality treatment center in San Diego, they’ll most likely receive:

  • A complete psychiatric evaluation, sometimes called a biopsychosocial assessment, that includes a thorough review of all the factors that can contribute to serious mental illness.
  • A full medical review and assessment
  • Assessment of and for all possible mental health disorders, including addiction, a.k.a. substance use disorder (SUD) and co-occurring disorders.
  • A compassionate, trauma-informed evaluation to identify the presence of past trauma and/or current symptoms of past trauma, i.e. a careful review to detect post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
  • A review of any components of or signs of neurodivergence – i.e. autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or attentional and impulsivity issues like those associated with ADHD – that may contribute to or exacerbate other/primary mental health disorders or symptoms.

That’s the first reason people choose residential treatment: the clinicians take the time needed to understand exactly what’s going on, and arrive at an accurate diagnosis, which is required for determining an effective treatment plan.

Now let’s take a closer look at what happens in residential treatment and learn about the significant benefits for mental health and overall health, wellness, and wellbeing.

Residential Treatment: What Happens When You Choose to Focus on You?

When you choose to focus on you and take time away from the demands of daily life, you can make real progress on your healing journey. And when people from Orange County go to San Diego for residential mental health treatment, they can make real progress while they stay connected – but not too connected, not all day every day – to the most important people in their lives, because they’re really not too far away.

Let’s clarify how it works.

When people are in residential treatment, they:

  • Live 24/7 at the treatment center, including weekends.
  • Engage in immersive treatment every day, with special activities and/or treatment homework during the evenings.
  • Spend time with others – their treatment peers – navigating similar, but perhaps not identical, challenges.
  • Get the kind of time they may have never actually had: time to focus on their mental health, their personal healing process, and learn what they need to grow and thrive in recovery.
  • Have the opportunity to develop and practice effective and practical tools for recovery, like emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and stress management skills.

Treatment plans at high-quality residential mental health treatment centers in San Diego will include most, if not all, of the following components:

Therapy and Counseling

Medication (when/if needed)

    • Antidepressants
    • Anxiolytics
    • IV Ketamine
    • SPRAVATO®

Complementary Support

    • Mindfulness
    • Yoga
    • Meditation
    • Expressive therapies and activities, such as music and writing

Educational Workshops and Classes

In addition – and because it’s still California, after all – residential treatment centers in San Diego are up to speed on all the latest and most innovative developments in mental health care. People who travel from the OC to San Diego don’t leave access to the newest treatments behind: they get them in a more relaxed, and less stressful environment.

Innovative treatments and supportive therapies include options such as Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB), NAD IV Therapy, and others, depending on the treatment center, their clinicians and staff, treatment philosophy, and resources.

Belief in Recovery: Why People Make the Trip to San Diego

People choose residential treatment, in most cases, because they believe spending time away from home can help them regain control of their lives.

Chronic, untreated mental health issues, whether mild, moderate, or serious, can create significant challenges and lead to a wide range of negative consequences that can be reduced, mitigated, or avoided altogether by engaging in evidence-based treatment. In addition to negative emotional, psychological, and physical consequences, we know serious mental illness can also cause problems in relationships and at work. In a residential treatment center, expert clinicians like psychiatrists, therapists, and counselors staff provide treatment to heal the mind and body, while patients have time focus on themselves, learn how to connect to recovery peers, support groups, and other community resources to help rebuild the life they want to live when they move from residential treatment to less immersive care or independent living back at home.

When people commit to residential treatment, it’s a commitment to themselves, to recovery, and to hope for the future. When we look at it that way, it makes sense that people from Orange County are going to San Diego for residential mental health treatment: they get all the benefits of being away from home, without being too far from home.

About Angus Whyte

Angus Whyte has an extensive background in neuroscience, behavioral health, adolescent development, and mindfulness, including lab work in behavioral neurobiology and a decade of writing articles on mental health and mental health treatment. In addition, Angus brings twenty years of experience as a yoga teacher and experiential educator to his work for Crownview. He’s an expert at synthesizing complex concepts into accessible content that helps patients, providers, and families understand the nuances of mental health treatment, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes and quality of life for all stakeholders.