In The Muses Program for Minoritized Youth, we understand that treatment options must be as nuanced as the youth that we collaborate with. In our first sessions together, our program crafts a treatment plan with each child, adolescent, young adult, and family members to facilitate a family-clinical team collaborative process around healing. 

Treatment can involve a combination of individual therapy, group therapy, and medication support that is specifically tailored to youth's needs. Throughout our work together, treatment options and goals are continually reassessed with youth to ensure each child, adolescent, and young adult feels ownership over - and involvement in - their care.

Individual Therapy

Too often minoritized youth do not have space to discuss integral aspects of their identity, such as being transgender, Black, Asian American, LGBTQ+, or diverse in America. For many children, adolescents, and young adults that we see in Muses, this can be their first time having space to openly discuss what it means for them to be minoritized at home, in their communities, in America, and in the world.

Through the overarching lens of the minority stress framework, our therapists work one-on-one with youth to support them in rediscovering parts of themselves that may have been lost or harmed by society as well as who they want to become in the future. This collaboration also includes tools to aid in emotional regulation, navigating discrimination, and healing from trauma.

Types of therapy offered in Muses:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): A therapy that helps youth examine their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Through examination of thought patterns and behaviors that occur in stressful situations, as well as gradual exposures to the instances that cause anxiety, youth learn ways to manage their anxiety, depression, and fears.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT): A type of therapy for youth who have experienced bullying, discrimination, and abuse leading to psychiatric symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The therapy helps with thought distortions that can occur from trauma, as well as providing tools to cope with anxiety and fear.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A version of therapy that focuses on the relationship a youth has with themselves and with others. Goals of the therapy are to increase self-worth, awareness of self and how you relate to other people, and understanding of aspirations, fears, and hopes.

Mentalization Based Therapy: A modality of therapy that centers around understanding your emotions as well as the emotions others might be experiencing. One way to think of this therapy is "putting yourself in someone else's shoes," which helps with navigating difficult emotions and conversations. 

Supportive Therapy: Focused on providing encouragement of current strengths, this type of therapy is woven throughout most sessions that are held in Muses. This therapy is sometimes used before progressing to TF-CBT to help increase a youth's ability to handle trauma work.

Groups in Muses

Research continuously demonstrates the power of community to improve mental health and decrease suicidality. In the minority stress theory, community has also been noted to be one of the main factors to improve mental health for minoritized people.

In The Muses Program, we have two groups that run simultaneously: one group is designed for kids and adolescents ages 10 - 16, while our second group is for teenagers and young adults ages 17 - 23.  

Topics addressed include being minoritized in America, the minority stress theory, the beauty each youth finds in their identities, safety online and in their communities, and developing a path to their future self as a minoritized person. The goals of groups include increased pride in all facets of the identities youth hold, increased self-advocacy around discrimination and healing, and greater awareness of their internal strengths.

Groups run for a total of 16-weeks: the group for older teenagers and young adults is held on Tuesday evenings, while our younger age group is held on Thursday evenings. 

Medication Support

There are times in which psychiatric medications can help with psychiatric symptoms. There are also times that children, teenagers, young adults, and their families come to Muses unsure if medications are right for them. One role of our clinic is to partner with you around this journey, and to provide evidence-based reasons why medications may be beneficial or not.

If medications are clinically indicated for a youth, our team discusses with caregivers and your child, adolescent, or young adult why the medication is being suggested, what symptoms we expect psychotropics to help with, what the side effects can be, along with how our team will monitor symptom improvement.

Discussions around medications include respect for how people people arrive to Muses with varying histories with the field of psychiatry. Minoritized people especially have been harmed in the past - and currently - by bias in medicine and psychiatry, and our team's goal is to be part of correcting these wrongs through cultural-humility and cultural-respectful collaboration around medication support.