Summary: Christmas/Winter break can be a good time for residential mental health treatment for a variety of reasons. One good reason is that it’s an ideal time to reset for the New Year. You can consolidate gains you made, identify things you want to change, and create a plan of action that sets you up for success in the year to come.
Five More Good Reasons:
- Time
- Money
- Expert Support
- Trigger Management
- Home by New Year
We’ll elaborate on these reasons below.
Christmas/Winter Break: An Ideal Time for Mental Health Treatment
You may read this and think, what, do I deserve to be punished or something?
Why would I choose to spend Christmas in a treatment center instead of with my family?
Those are legitimate questions, which we can reframe, and suggest new ways to think about them.
First, if you have a mental health disorder or diagnosis – especially for a complex condition like schizophrenia, severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or treatment-resistant depression (TD) – and you’re not satisfied with your treatment progress, we suggest thinking of spending time in residential as a type of reward, as opposed to a type of punishment.
During residential treatment, you don’t have to focus on anything but healing. You don’t have to go to work, cook your own meals, or even make your own schedule. You don’t have to sift through work emails and decide which you have to answer.
It’s possible to put down your phone and not see it for a week.
That can be a welcome respite from fielding texts, phone calls, and listening to voicemails. It may be the first time in months you don’t spend time doomscrolling social media feeds, news sites, and resisting the constant onslaught of targeted advertising.
That’s what we mean. We’ll follow that up with three questions of our own:
When was the last time you had a full two weeks that was all about you, your healing process, and getting better at managing your symptoms?
Have you ever had time like that?
A real period of time where improving mental health was your primary goal, and the primary goal of everyone around you?
That’s what residential treatment over winter break can be. Not a negative, but a positive that can improve your daily life for years to come.
Now let’s put meat on the bones of the “Five More Good Reasons” we mention above.
Five Good Reasons to Start Treatment Over Winter Break
1. Time.
If you work, you’ll likely have time off or can get time off without telling your coworkers you’re going to treatment. If you’re in school, time in treatment won’t disrupt your academic schedule. In either case, you’ll probably have time off, and you can use it to focus on things you didn’t have time to focus on during the busy parts of the year.
2. Money.
Okay, this isn’t a touchy-feely reason, but it’s eminently practical. In terms of insurance, your out-of-pocket and deductible costs will likely reset on January 1st. You can save a lot of money on treatment if you’ve already met those maximums, because your insurance may just cover the entire process.
3. Expert Support.
During residential mental health treatment, the entire staff of the treatment center is there to support you. You can take advantage of psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, and other staff. You may be able to participate in yoga classes in the morning and meditation classes in the evening, depending on the complementary supports offered by your treatment center of your choice. There are also your treatment peers to consider, who can use their lived experience to offer valuable insight into treatment and recovery.
4. Trigger Management.
During treatment, therapists spend significant time helping you identify triggers, i.e. external stimuli that can exacerbate your symptoms. They also help you identify and resolve non-productive patterns of behavior, and work with you to develop positive coping strategies to handle the triggers and replace non-productive patterns with productive ones. We’ll also point out that members of your family – maybe one, maybe more – may be significant triggers for you. Consider this: if you’re in residential treatment on Christmas, it’s much easier to manage triggers when the person who triggers you isn’t sitting right across the dinner table from you. You may be able to have an entire holiday meal without ruminating about past family issues. How cool would that be?
5. Home for New Year’s Eve.
If you start towards the beginning of December, you can be home for New Year’s Eve. That could be a great perk. Home for a non-stressful, less emotionally charged holiday, ready to make new resolutions based on what you learned during your time in residential treatment. That could be a positive way to end this year, and a great way to start the new one.
Your Winter Reset
Out with the old, in with the new: that’s a helpful way to understand how Christmas/Winter break might be a good time for residential mental health treatment. You can debrief the year, spend time working on yourself, spend a few days with family, and then start 2026 with fresh eyes, renewed energy, and hope for the future.
Gianna Melendez
Jodie Dahl, CpHT