Anyone who struggles with their mental health can create a better life for themself through mental health skill building. Regardless of the direction life has taken, whether you battle substance addiction, behavioral challenges, or mental disorders, professional help exists. Through our comprehensive programming at Puget Sound Recovery, you will grow your ability to manage your weaknesses and struggles. If you have a desire to learn skills for mental health, stay with us to learn about the program.
What Is Mental Health Skill Building?
Mental health skill-building is exactly what it sounds like—it’s the development of a skill set that helps you manage your life. Many people in the United States battle their mental health, whether they have a mental health disorder or not. At Puget Sound, we focus on recovery for both substance addictions and mental disorders. People who have a substance use disorder (SUD) carry a history of pain that often deteriorates their mental wellness. And people with mental disorders have been dealing with their symptoms for years, often without help or a specific diagnosis.
Therefore, building skills to improve mental health teaches individuals how to best function within their situation. Using psychotherapy, the training program teaches emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills.
How Skill Building Helps
Mental health skill-building is an evidence-based psychotherapy approach based on the core belief that health and wellness can be taught and developed. Using teaching strategies, goal-setting, and inner exploration, individuals learn how to thrive, even if it’s not an inherent ability. Here are some of the specific coping techniques for mental health that the program teaches.
Managing Mental Health Symptoms
When you enter mental health skill-building, you can know it will help you manage the symptoms of your disorder. We treat a great number of mental health disorders at Puget Sound Recovery. These include anxiety disorders like anxiety and phobias, and mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. Additionally, it includes psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, personality disorders, disruptive disorders, and neurodevelopmental disorders, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Further, mental health skill-building therapy also treats co-occurring disorders, including mental health symptoms that overlap with substance abuse symptoms.
Improving Relationships
Because mental health skill-building teaches how to improve your symptoms and function at a higher level, it results in improved relationships. Often, when a person feels trapped in their symptoms, they withdraw from others or lash out. It can be hard to balance symptoms while also balancing healthy relationships, which is why the program focuses on relationship development.
Setting the Foundation for Long-Term Recovery
Mental health skill-building is goal-focused and structured to provide lasting changes. The whole purpose behind skill-building in therapy is teaching individuals how to care for themselves going forward. Rather than being dependent on treatment or others, the program gives you the tools and abilities to manage your symptoms independently. However, we also believe in the power of support, which is why we connect our guests to therapy, case management, and medication. Overall, we help our guests thrive by gaining the ability to do what is required for their wellness.
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Core Mental Health Skills Taught in Therapy
Anyone can benefit from mental health skill-building, regardless of their age or situation. As an inpatient or outpatient program, it is a valuable recovery approach that can be immediately employed in your life. For example, college students face many challenges and stressors that can worsen their mental health. If they have a pre-existing mental health condition, they might not be able to handle college life without turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Yet, mental health skill-building training prepares them to face any difficulty with a better understanding of themselves and how to function. Let’s discuss the core skills taught for mental health in programming.
Emotional Regulation Skills
Emotional regulation doesn’t come naturally to many people who have disorders that affect their moods, feelings, and behaviors. When your emotional processing is dysregulated due to a disorder, emotional regulation has to be a learned skill. Our mental health skill-building program helps our guests first name their feelings and then operate intentionally in response. Truthfully, such training helps in all areas of life, from professional to personal.
Coping Skills
Coping skills refer to the ability to handle triggers and symptoms as they arise. Life is never going to go the way that’s expected, but individuals can learn to handle issues with confidence, mindfulness, and appropriate responses. For example, anxiety disorders can be managed both through cognitive approaches like problem-solving and relaxation techniques like deep breathing. In our program, individuals plan for challenges with skill-building psychotherapy.
Cognitive Restructuring Skills
Cognitive restructuring requires learning and practice for many people. It refers to the ability to identify and improve negative thoughts, also called cognitive distortions. People with mental, neurocognitive, and behavioral disorders tend towards negative thinking patterns that become second nature. For example, cognitive distortions include overgeneralization, labeling, catastrophizing, and delusions. Thus, cognitive restructuring is re-learning new thinking patterns, which is taught through skill-building programming.
Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills are another term for people skills or interacting with others in healthy and effective ways. Under the heading of this skill is handling social scenarios, relationship building, and communication. For some people, these abilities come naturally, but for people with mental and behavioral disorders, the social side can be challenging. Fortunately, these skills can be taught with intention.
Evidence-Based Psychotherapies with Skill Building
As noted, mental health skill-building is a psychotherapy technique falling under behavioral therapy. However, it can also be used in combination with other traditional therapy methods like CBT, DBT, and ACT. Each of these evidence-based therapies includes elements of skill-building, like teaching emotional regulation as one component, for example. If you’re interested in mental health therapy, it can be tricky to know which one to choose. Here’s a brief breakdown of the three core psychotherapies that overlap with mental health skill-building.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a well-known and extensively researched behavioral therapy method. Notably, it is possible to say CBT is a root therapy method, as both DBT and ACT have fundamental elements formed from CBT. Overall, the main gist of cognitive behavioral therapy is looking at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are linked. Thus, when a person experiences negative thoughts or emotions, they will carry out negative actions, which will impact their whole life. Like skill-building, CBT is goal-focused and encourages daily work on learned skills.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT, stems from CBT, following many of the same principles. However, DBT is more focused on emotions than the full cycle of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. As such, emotional regulation is a main skill in DBT. Interestingly, dialectical behavioral therapy was specifically created to help people with borderline personality disorder. Today, it can be used as a treatment for a wide range of mental health challenges.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and commitment therapy is a psychotherapy approach that focuses on accepting the things that can’t be changed. For example, individuals can work towards feeling at peace about their mental health diagnosis or their history of substance abuse. At the same time, ACT helps them work on making changes in their life going forward. While ACT teaches people how to carry the negative with them, it also encourages self-growth and the achievement of goals.
Find a Mental Health Treatment Facility Near Me
Now that you understand the benefits of mental health skill-building and how the program operates, it’s time to reserve a spot for yourself in the program. You can begin mental health healing close to home at our Puget Sound Recovery center in Sumner, WA. Once you connect with us, we can provide a diagnosis to help you receive tailored help. Additionally, we can direct you to the right program for your needs, whether that’s mental health skill-building or a different psychotherapy. Please contact our admissions team today to start step one!
