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| Name |
Austen Riggs Center |
| Address |
25 Main Street |
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P.O. Box 962 |
| Town |
Stockbridge |
| State |
Massachusetts |
| Country |
USA |
| Post Code |
01262 |
| Phone |
413 298 5511 |
| Fax |
413 298 4020 |
| Email |
info@austenriggs.net |
| Website |
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About Austen Riggs Center
** About the Austen Riggs Center **
The Austen Riggs Center is a small, not-for-profit, open psychiatric continuum of care specializing in the psychotherapeutic treatment of psychiatric disorders. Internationally known for its respectful work with emotionally troubled individuals who have failed to benefit from previous treatment, Riggs is located in the small town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on Norman Rockwell’s Main Street.
For over 85 years, the Austen Riggs Center has offered long-term residential and hospital-level psychiatric treatment based on intensive, four-times-weekly individual psychotherapy, provided by psychiatrists and psychologists who have advanced and specialized training. From hospital to residential to supervised and unsupervised apartment living, Riggs provides continuity of care with the same psychotherapist, psychopharmacologist and interdisciplinary team through various levels of treatment and living arrangements. With academic affiiliations with Harvard Medical School and Yale University School of Medicine, Riggs is the only psychiatric treatment center in the United States providing longer term intensive individual psychotherapy to help otherwise treatment resistant patients take charge of their lives.
** Mission **
The mission of the Austen Riggs Center is to improve the lives of emotionally troubled and “treatment-resistant” patients by providing quality and cost-effective treatment. The focus throughout the Center’s programs is the importance of human relationships and the responsibility and dignity of the individual.
The basic ingredients essential to fulfilling the Center’s mission are:
* Treatment organized around an intensive individual therapeutic relationship,
focusing on the patient’s recognition and tolerance of experiences of
conflict and pain, leading to the development of a sense of perspective on
the illness.
* An open therapeutic community, involving all staff and patients
* A careful assessment phase, including psychological testing
* A range of programs, geared to individual levels of capability and need
* Continuous treatment by the same multidisciplinary team as patients move
between programs.
* Psychopharmacologic treatment
* Group work, substance abuse treatment, family treatment and help with
reintegration into the external community.
* A broad activities program for creative expression, with patients in the role
of student, free from clinical interpretation.
* Ongoing staff training, research and education to further the primary
clinical task.
* Recruitment and retention of quality staff
** Vision **
In an increasingly complex and fragmented world, the dignity of the individual, the importance of human relationships, and the centrality of a sense of community are in danger. The focus and traditions of the Austen Riggs Center orient the staff to help troubled patients meet these and other rapidly changing psychological challenges of contemporary society. We intend to build on our distinguished past, helping our patients develop personal competence in a completely open setting that emphasizes the individual’s capacity to face and take responsibility for his or her life—past, present, and future. We will continue to nurture our patients’ strengths, foster their social functioning, and encourage family collaboration. Through our research, education, and training programs, we will continue to educate professionals in our psychodynamic perspective, applying this learning to a broad range of psychosocial problems. Finally, in this time of diminishing mental health benefits, we will continue to develop cost-effective treatment settings that focus on individual psychotherapy, community living, and the recognition of the limitations of resources.
** Values **
* Affirmation of the dignity and responsibility of the individual
* Recognition, appreciation, and enhancement of individual strengths
* The importance of human relationships
* Respect for individual differences
* The centrality of the psychotherapeutic relationship
* The learning opportunities in a community of differentiated voices
* The importance of examined living
* Attention to the conflict between individual choice and the requirements of a
community.
* Openness to innovation and creativity
* An open setting to promote personal responsibility and freedom of choice in
treatment.
* The importance of recognizing and preserving multiple roles, including those
of student and community member.
* Provision of treatment based on quality and outcome, not profit.
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History Of Austen Riggs Center
In 1907, while recuperating from tuberculosis at his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, New York internist, Dr. Austen Fox Riggs, began to expand his interest in psychiatry and psychology. Influenced by the mental hygiene movement of the time, he developed his own system of treatment based on talk therapy combined with a structured routine of daily activities that emphasized a balance between work, play, rest, and exercise. He founded the "Stockbridge Institute for the Psychoneuroses” (renamed “The Austen Riggs Foundation" in 1919).
Dr. Riggs died in 1940, and was succeeded in 1947 by Dr. Robert P. Knight, who came from the Menninger Clinic and became President of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Led by Dr. Knight, Austen Riggs became internationally recognized as the center of American ego psychology, with a staff of preeminent psychoanalysts, including Erik H. Erikson, David Rapaport, Merton Gill, Roy Schafer, and Margaret Brenman-Gibson, all of whom made major contributions to this important area of psychoanalytic thought. Under his directorship, the Therapeutic Community Program was developed to enhance the authority of patients and support the open setting. Joan Erikson, the artist and dancer, began the Activities Program, including the Theater Program and the Montessori Nursery School. After Dr. Knight’s death, Dr. Otto Will, formerly of Chestnut Lodge, directed the Center and brought his understanding of early attachment problems and psychotic vulnerability to the treatment program.
Austen Riggs Center clinicians have a long history of making significant theoretical and clinical contributions to the mental health field. Erikson’s Young Man Luther was written from his experience of treating a Riggs patient; Knight’s original paper describing borderline personality disorder also derived from his clinical experience at Riggs. This tradition continues through Riggs' Erikson Institute for Education and Research, which applies the learning from intensive work with patients to the problems of the larger society.
Over the years, the clinical program at Riggs has increasingly focused on the context for the patient’s illness, and family treatment has become an important aspect of the work. Along with growth in the continuum of care (residential, day treatment, and aftercare programs designed to support patients’ transition and reintegration into society), Riggs developed interdisciplinary clinical teams, which allow continuity of care with the same clinicians throughout a patient’s stay at Riggs. Together, these evolutions in clinical programs have created a stronger and more responsive institution.
The Stockbridge Campus
Since 1907 the Austen Riggs Center has been an integral part of Main Street, Stockbridge—Norman Rockwell’s quintessential American small town. The Inn, which operates as both an inpatient and residential facility, with a capacity for 40 beds, was built in the early 1890s and was sold to Riggs in 1930. The Medical Office Building was built in the early 1890s and purchased by the Center to function as the locus for medical and administrative offices. The Elms, providing residential housing for eight patients, was built in 1772 by Timothy Edwards, a Revolutionary War colonel, and the son of Jonathan Edwards, the second minister of the Stockbridge Congregational Church. The Elms Cottage was the site where the first trans-Atlantic cable message was successfully received from Europe by Cyrus W. Field.
Patients resided as paying guests at the Purinton House on Main Street until 1939, when Riggs purchased the building for patient housing. Damaged by a fire in 1981, the building was renovated with funds provided by Trustee Peter I.B. Lavan, and renamed Lavan Hall in his honor.
An Expanded Therapeutic Community
In 2005 Lavan Hall was redesigned to meet the growing needs of the therapeutic community. The residence was reconfigured from single units with one common kitchen and living room to three multi-bedroom apartments, each with its own kitchen, living room and common area.
In response to patient need, the Center purchased the Lilac Inn in Lenox and renovated it to accommodate eight patients, with educational offerings supporting the development of social roles as employee, parent, student and citizen.
The cornerstone of the growing therapeutic community is the new Patient Community Center, designed to serve as a central gathering place. The new building is attached to the existing Patient Inn, and contains rooms for group and community meetings, social events, classrooms, recreation and exercise, as well as staff offices. Moving these activities and offices to the new building provides a focused space for the Therapeutic Community, allowing more quiet space and additional rooms at the Inn for newly admitted patients.
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