Spotlight: Arbour-HRI Hospital’s Women’s Inpatient Unit


The Arbour-HRI women’s inpatient program offers specialized care for the psychological, behavioral and emotional needs of women within a safe and supportive milieu that respects each woman’s strengths as well as her individual needs and concerns.

The program emphasizes rapid stabilization of symptoms and self-harming behaviors, and teaching new skills for self-management. It provides individualized problem- and skill-focused care, stressing rapid stepdown to less intensive levels of care, and transition to outpatient care and the community.

Arbour-HRI’s inpatient program accepts patients with PTSD, dissociative disorders, personality disorders, mood disorders, major depression, and anxiety disorders. Patients may have substance use or eating disorders; however, these will be secondary to the psychiatric disorder. Those patients who are exhibiting acute, floridly manic symptoms or those who require special observation may be admitted to the hospital’s general inpatient unit prior to consideration for the inpatient program.

Women referred to the program are those whose behavioral health needs can best be supported in a healing, nurturing environment where staff and other patients are supportive and share common issues. The environment includes those who are able to engage in treatment and strive for their highest level of functioning.

Some examples of appropriate referrals to the Women’s Unit include:

• Women for whom this represents their first inpatient hospitalization and there is no associated assaultive, violent behavior
• Those whose life circumstances have changed causing significant depression or anxiety including, but not limited to, post-partum depression, loss and grieving related to relationship issues, loss of self-esteem, or social isolation
• Women who are victims or survivors of sexual and physical abuse or trauma
• Younger aged, fragile women who need a less disruptive environment than may typically be found in acute psychiatric hospitals. This may include college-aged females who have suicidal ideation or exhibit self-injurious behavior
• Women who struggle with addictions and have co-occurring psychiatric symptoms.

The program provides:

• State-of-the-art psychopharmacology for management of severe symptoms
• Individualized treatment to reduce target symptoms, including work with self-destructive ego states and personality fragmentation
• Psychodiagnostic and neuropsychological testing as needed
• Collaboration with and consultation to outpatient providers and case manager, including in-hospital bridge meetings, to facilitate discharge and transition to the community
• Therapy with family and significant others to facilitate transition back to the community
• Comprehensive group therapy programs focusing on affect and symptom management, self-care skills, coping skills, understanding and managing trauma symptoms, and decreasing fear and distress from thoughts, feelings, flashbacks and dissociative episodes.