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Teen programs ยท Ages 13 to 17

Teen PHP in Colorado

A full clinical day for ages 13 to 17, and your teen comes home for the night. Our most structured teen program, for when a few afternoons a week are not enough.

Get help for your teen Call (303) 219-0973
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Partial hospitalization

A full clinical day, and your teen still sleeps at home.

A teen partial hospitalization program is the most structured treatment The Redpoint Center offers on an outpatient basis, one step below inpatient care. Your teen spends the clinical day with us on weekdays and comes home in the evening. There is no overnight stay and no hospital admission, which is why this level is often called day treatment.

It takes the school day, and there is no version of this that does not. That is the trade PHP asks for, and it is worth naming before anything else on this page. The school conversation happens before your teen starts rather than after, and our team coordinates on coursework and absences so a month of treatment does not turn into a lost semester. If your family cannot make that trade right now, our teen IOP runs three afternoons a week after the last bell.

PHP exists for stabilization and for building skills quickly. It is the more structured of our two teen programs, and the right level when a few afternoons a week are no longer enough, when symptoms need daily attention, or when your teen is stepping down from a hospital or residential stay. The threshold that keeps it outpatient is straightforward: your teen has to be safe at home overnight.

Teen PHP runs at our Boulder and Thornton offices, for ages 13 to 17. Availability varies by office, so call and we will tell you which one fits your family's week.

  • Ages 13 to 17
  • A full clinical day, weekdays
  • Teen PHP in Boulder and Thornton
When PHP is the right level

Inside the day

What a clinical day is made of.

The schedule is built to use the hours rather than fill them. Every day mixes individual work, group work, and time that is deliberately not therapy.

Individual therapy each week

One-on-one sessions with a dedicated therapist, where your teen works on their own goals and says the things they will not say in front of a group.

Group therapy, every day

Check-in groups, skills groups, and process groups, with a different focus through the week: DBT skills, relapse prevention, and substance use education where it applies.

Family therapy and parent education

Scheduled family sessions, plus meetings where parents learn what their teen is actually dealing with. A full day of treatment changes the house, and the house is part of the plan.

Coordination with your teen's school

Our team works with the school on coursework and absences, and an hour of each day is set aside for schoolwork, so the days your teen is with us are accounted for rather than simply missed.

Medical and psychiatric care

Evaluation and medication management as needed, overseen by our Medical Director, Ryan Hashem, MD.

Recreation and art

A full day is long. Movement, creative work, and structured breaks keep teens engaged and give them somewhere to put what the therapy hours bring up.

Level of care

When PHP is the right call.

These are the situations where a full day is the honest recommendation. If none of them describes your teen, the assessment will say so, and a lighter level may be the better fit.

Stepping down from a hospital stay

After an inpatient admission, PHP keeps the structure while your teen goes back to sleeping at home.

Coming out of residential treatment

A graduated landing, rather than a drop from full-time care straight to a weekly appointment.

Symptoms that need daily attention

When something is escalating week to week and nobody is seeing your teen often enough to catch it.

Medication that needs stabilizing

When a change in medication needs closer monitoring than an occasional appointment allows.

When weekly therapy or IOP is not enough

Not a failure of the lighter level. Sometimes the right answer is simply more hours, sooner.

How we work

Two problems at once, treated in one plan.

Many teens who need this level of care arrive with more than one diagnosis, and PHP is built to treat them together rather than in sequence.

Dual diagnosis is common at this level rather than exceptional. A teen arrives with depression and substance use, or with anxiety alongside something else, and treating one while ignoring the other tends to leave both in place. The American Society of Addiction Medicine is direct about this in the adolescent volume of its criteria: among patients with substance use disorders, co-occurring mental health conditions are an expectation, not an exception, and adolescent substance use programs are expected to provide fully integrated mental health care. We do not silo mental health and addiction treatment. The groups and the treatment plan bring the approaches together.

The clinical work is named rather than vague. Individual sessions draw on cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and trauma-focused approaches, chosen for the teen rather than handed out at intake. Group work runs DBT skills, relapse prevention, and substance use education where it applies. Progress is measured through the program and the plan changes when something is not working, which is what makes an intensive schedule worth its hours.

Family involvement is heavier here than at any lighter level, and deliberately so. ASAM's adolescent criteria treat the family as part of the unit of care, and note that all levels of care in the adolescent continuum are expected to offer family services. Teens here work with licensed professional counselors and clinical social workers, and the teen program has its own clinical leadership at both offices rather than an adult team covering a day shift.

Does it work? A 2024 systematic review in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry gathered fifteen studies of ten adolescent partial hospitalization programs and found that functioning and mental health improved from admission to discharge in every one of them. The same authors are careful to add that evidence for PHP compared with other models is still limited, and that controlled studies with follow-up are needed to know whether the gains hold. That is the honest state of it, and we would rather give you that than a promise.

Starting

How a teen actually starts PHP.

  1. 1

    You call, or send the form.

    Describe what has been happening at home, in whatever words you have. You do not need a diagnosis or the right vocabulary to start this conversation. If your teen is coming out of a hospital or a residential stay, lead with that, because it changes how quickly we move.

  2. 2

    A clinical assessment.

    A clinician sits down with your teen and with you, and builds the picture that decides the level of care. Sometimes the honest conclusion is that teen IOP or weekly therapy would serve your teen better, and that is a result worth having before you enroll rather than after.

  3. 3

    The school conversation.

    PHP takes the school day, so this is handled before your teen starts. We work with the school on coursework, absences, and what going back looks like.

  4. 4

    Your teen starts, and the step down is already in view.

    Family sessions are on the calendar from the first week, and so is the plan for what follows. Most teens step down from PHP into teen IOP and then into lighter continuing work, with the same team throughout.

Parent questions

What parents ask about teen PHP.

What is a teen partial hospitalization program?
A teen PHP is a full clinical day of treatment on weekdays, with your teen home every evening. It is the most structured care The Redpoint Center offers without an overnight stay, one step below inpatient, and it is often called day treatment for exactly that reason. The day combines individual therapy, group therapy, family work, and medical oversight, compressed into daytime hours. Teen PHP serves ages 13 to 17.

Is PHP the same as my teen being hospitalized?
No. There is no admission, no overnight stay, and no locked unit. Your teen attends during the day and sleeps at home every night, which is the line that keeps PHP an outpatient level of care. The word hospitalization in the name refers to the intensity of the treatment day, not to where your teen lives. The clinical threshold for PHP rather than inpatient care is whether your teen can be safe at home overnight, and establishing that is part of the assessment.

Will my teen miss school?
Yes, and that is the honest trade this level asks for. A full clinical day runs on weekdays, so it takes the school day with it. We handle the school conversation before your teen starts rather than after, coordinating on coursework and absences, and setting aside an hour of each day for schoolwork so that treatment does not become a lost semester. If your family cannot make that trade right now, teen IOP runs three afternoons a week from 4 to 7pm and leaves school untouched. Which one is right is a clinical question, not only a scheduling one.

Is PHP or IOP better for a teen?
The question is intensity, not quality. PHP is the heavier of the two in every sense: it fills the weekday, it takes school with it, and it exists for teens whose symptoms need attention daily. Teen IOP asks for three afternoons and leaves the rest of the week intact. If you are reading this page because a hospital, a school, or a therapist used the word PHP, that recommendation is usually about how quickly things have been moving rather than a verdict on your teen. The assessment confirms it or corrects it, and teens move between the two levels in both directions as they change.

How long is teen PHP, and how many hours a week?
Both are set at the assessment rather than fixed in advance. PHP is a full clinical day on weekdays, which is substantially more weekly treatment than an intensive outpatient program, and the specific schedule is confirmed with you before your teen starts. Length is individualized too. PHP is built to be a phase rather than a destination: teens stay at this intensity until they are steady enough to step down, and that point is reassessed as you go. We will give you a realistic picture once we have met your teen, and tell you honestly if it changes.

What happens after PHP?
Almost nobody finishes PHP and simply stops. The usual path is down a level, into teen IOP and then into lighter continuing work, and that path gets drawn in the first weeks rather than the last. Handovers are the fragile part: SAMHSA's protocol on intensive outpatient treatment warns that any change of setting, staff, or peers introduces a risk of the client dropping out, and notes that moving someone between levels inside one organization disrupts them less than a referral out to a new provider. Because Redpoint runs the whole range, your teen steps down without starting over with a new set of adults.

Where is teen PHP offered?
Teen PHP runs at our Boulder and Thornton offices. Availability varies by office, so call and we will tell you which one fits your family's week. If you are in Boulder County, teen PHP in Boulder covers the local detail: the schools, the drive, and the clinicians who lead teen care there. If you are in Adams County or the north Denver metro, teen PHP in Thornton does the same for that side of the state. Teen PHP serves ages 13 to 17. For 18 and over, our adult PHP runs at Fort Collins, Boulder, and Longmont.

Does insurance cover teen PHP?
In most cases, yes. We accept Aetna, Anthem, Carelon Behavioral Health, Cigna, First Health Network, Kaiser Permanente, Rocky Mountain Health Plans, Select Health, TRICARE and United Healthcare, and we will still check a plan that is not on that list. We can also accept some Colorado Medicaid policies. Call us or submit an insurance verification form to find out about your specific coverage.

What if this is an emergency right now?
Call or text 988 before anything else on this page. It reaches 988 Colorado, the state mental health line, free and confidential, 24 hours a day. If your teen is in immediate physical danger, call 911. The Redpoint Center is an outpatient center rather than a crisis line, and once the immediate danger has passed we can take care from there.
Not sure whether a full day is the right level? Call (303) 219-0973

A full day is a big decision. Start with a conversation.

Tell us what the last few weeks have actually looked like at home. We will help you work out whether a full clinical day is what your teen needs, or whether something lighter would do it.

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