Specialized Care for Men
Our desire to provide advanced and specialized care for men continues to grow since opening in 2004. We are a licensed residential mental health and addiction treatment program that has been accredited since 2012 and a certified B Corp since 2018. Our philosophy is based on a non-12-step, meaning-centered methodology, that interconnects all our services including medical withdrawal, anger management, rTMS, trauma therapy, and PTSD treatment.
Our Highly Skilled Team
We believe that every client deserves to have a highly skilled, compassionate, and curious team of professionals to help them. Our team provides a very wide range of proven health treatments such as EMDR, DBT, and CBT because while some treatments help many, nothing works for everyone. Our extensive team of staff and limited peer group size lets us offer the services of a large facility with the privacy and attention of a small one.
Our Philosophy: A Non-12-Step Program
Our non-12-step program methodology is unique and lets us be far more than an addiction treatment facility. While other centres focus on abstinence or harm reduction, we focus on helping our clients solve the underlying issues driving addictive behaviour or mental health suffering. This allows all clients to get the full benefit of our program.
- Our Theory of Addiction
Our non-12-step program methodology for treating addiction, mental health, and trauma and PTSD comes from Dr. Viktor Frankl’s proposition that the fundamental motivation in humans is the will to meaning. As humans, we need to make sense of our lives and pursue a personally meaningful existence. When we can’t, we suffer real problems. In line with Frankl’s theory, we see addiction as a result of an individual’s persistently frustrated attempts to live a personally meaningful life.
- Our Approach to Trauma
The traumatology field is still in debate about what theory and resulting approach is most effective. For most people in treatment, exposure therapy is too destabilizing. We take a meaning-centered approach to trauma that accounts for all aspects of being a person – bio, psycho, social, and spiritual. We address a person’s particular symptoms from all these angles and help them build skills like self-regulation so that they may live a more fulfilling, embodied life that is meaningful and makes sense to them.
- Principles of Our Therapeutic Approach
Our programs stem from the theory and practice of Meaning-Centered Therapy (MCT), developed by psychologist Dr. Paul T. P. Wong. Dr. Wong was heavily influenced by Viktor Frankl’s Meaning Theory and used personal meaning as a way to organize different therapies such as existential psychotherapy, CBT, narrative therapy, and positive psychology into a unified therapeutic approach.
Most importantly, our focus on personal meaning requires us to make certain assumptions such as:
- Our Clients are Whole Human Beings
We do not treat an addict or an addiction. We treat human beings. We do not believe that a person with an addiction can be reduced to mere thoughts, feelings, or behaviours. As psychologist Jefferson A. Singer (1997) concluded, we must “take in the full dimensions of their lives – to see them as whole individuals struggling to achieve a sense of identity [and community]” (p. 17).
- Our Clients are Growth-Oriented
Our clients are inherently motivated toward growth where, if they can overcome barriers to the growth process, personal transformation is possible.
- Our Clients are the Authors of Their Own Lives
Much of our clinical effort is in helping clients take control of their lives, regardless of circumstances or personal and social limitations.
- Our Clients are Not Their Problems
- Our Clients are Not Their Problems
Our staff recognizes that pathologizing addictive behaviours reinforces the stigma of addiction and disrupts our relationship with clients. Therefore, we refuse to treat clients any differently than we ourselves expect to be treated when seeking help.
- Our Clients are Not Their Problems
With these assumptions in mind, we have designed a therapeutic program based on key principles of Meaning-Centered Therapy.
The Sunshine Coast Advantage
We are the only men’s only program of its kind in Canada, and this is just one of the features that makes us stand out from the rest. During your stay, you’ll also experience the following services exclusive to Sunshine Coast:
- Medical and psychiatric teams who work closely with each client
- An all professional counselling team with minimum of a graduate degree
- Truly personalized recovery programs written for each individual
- Comprehensive mental health assessment and treatment
- A high functioning and motivated all-male peer group
- Individual accommodation
- Significant 1-1 counselling
- Long-term aftercare across Canada
- Extensive fitness and recreation programs
- Family counselling and education sessions for multiple family members