Anna Westin House for Adolescents and Young Adults

The Anna Westin House-Adolescents is our 10-bed residential treatment program that provides a healing environment equipped to provide intensive eating disorder treatment for adolescent and young adult females and males.

Nestled in St. Paul’s Saint Anthony Park neighborhood, the house also includes family and loved ones in the recovery process. The length of stay depends on your child’s needs and situation; most residents “step down” to our adolescent Intensive Day Program when leaving AWHA.

The facility is closely supervised and monitored by adult professionals 24 hours/7 days a week. Your child’s medical status is closely monitored by nursing and medical staff. Nursing staff is always on duty, while eating disorder technicians and/or therapists are always on hand to support and manage appropriate resident relationships.

AWHA integrates comprehensive psychological, medical, psychiatric and nutritional care with family involvement and education, school, psycho-education, spirituality, yoga, music, art, and massage therapies to facilitate recovery.

Licensed teachers from the Saint Paul Public Schools coordinate your child’s academic work with her/his school.

We’ve worked successfully with adolescents with eating disorders—and their families—since 1993, and many of us have recovered from an eating disorder ourselves. These years of experience help us give you and your child what you need--now and in the coming days and weeks.

While working with The Emily Program, you can expect us to:

  • Respect you and your child as individuals
  • Reassure your child that recovery from her/his eating disorder is possible.
  • Understand how hard recovery can be
  • Remain committed to your child’s recovery, even on days when she/he doubts it
  • Take every diagnosis and treatment seriously
  • Provide insights and skills that help your child improve her/his life
  • Provide your child with a knowledgeable, trustworthy individual therapist
  • Provide your child with a knowledgeable, trustworthy individual dietitian
  • Provide medical and psychiatric services, when needed
  • Offer multiple therapy and support groups, addressing a wide range of issues
  • Encourage and support your involvement with family based treatment, family therapy, couples therapy, and other support for family and friends, based on your unique needs
  • Base our treatment decisions on research, community standards, and sound clinical judgment
  • Help you navigate the insurance system, working diligently to ensure the highest coverage possible
  • Work with passion and integrity to serve you and your child in a way that works best for you

Our expectations for you and your child are simple—and also may be difficult (that’s OK; recovery is hard work). We expect:

  • Your child to actively participate in recovery from her/his eating disorder
  • You and your child to be honest and respectful with yourself and those around you
  • You and your child to make treatment and recovery a top priority

Our mission is transparent: To provide exceptional, individualized care leading to recovery from eating disorders. Ideally, we want a world of peaceful relationships with food, weight, and body image, where everyone with an eating disorder can experience recovery.

If you have any question—before, during, or after your child’s time treatment at Anna Westin House—Adolescent please contact us. We are here to help you.

Click here to view a sample schedule of our Anna Westin House-Adolescent program.

Program Components

The following services are part of a typical week at the Anna Westin House-Adolescent. Residents participate in group sessions, a variety of individual sessions, and three therapeutic meals and snacks per day. Sessions include psychotherapy, family therapy, nutrition, art therapy, medical assessments, psychiatric visits, acupuncture, massage, spiritual care, music therapy, and others across the week. Each resident's schedule is personalized to meet their specific needs.

  • Education/Schooling: We make arrangements with a student's home district and the local school district to support their continued academic participation.
  • Individual psychotherapy: By exploring underlying emotions and interpersonal factors that contribute to an eating disorder, individuals learn to replace uncontrolled behaviors and negative feelings with a strong sense of self and a positive self-esteem.
  • Group psychotherapy: Groups meet to share common experiences to alleviate feelings of shame and isolation. Sharing common experiences breaks these barriers and inspires self-understanding as each person learns to identify unhealthy patterns and develop healthy alternatives. Group therapy includes CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), multifamily group, and others.
  • Family Therapy: Family therapy sessions explore and improve long-standing communication patterns between family members. These sessions provide awareness of common issues and roles and help the individual with the eating disorder to recover and work toward a successful transition to the next level of care. Multifamily group and meal sessions are incorporated each week.
  • Nutrition Therapy: Individual, group and family nutritional counseling, education, and meal planning are tailored to each resident's needs to help her interrupt symptom use, restore body health, and regain trust in her body's ability to regulate eating. These sessions and supported therapeutic meals and snacks help restore harmony to eating patterns, develop self-care skills, and help family members better understand how to support their loved one around eating.
  • Medical Care: A nursing staff, a physician, and a physician assistant evaluate and monitor each resident's medical status.
  • Psychiatric care: We work with individuals regarding evaluation of co-occuring conditions and medications that may be incorporated into treatment of the eating disorder or other related conditions.
  • Acupuncture/Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM): Acupuncture, acupressure, and TCM treatments help relieve anxiety and physical complaints and restore balance to the body.
  • Music and Art Therapy: Expressive therapies help relieve anxiety, address body image issues, provide non-verbal means of expression, and assist in developing new coping and expressive skills.
  • Spiritual therapy: Our non-denominational approach addresses issues of spiritual health through prayer, meditation, spiritual counseling, group discussions, and worship experiences as appropriate to each resident's beliefs and needs.
  • Movement therapy: Yoga, stretching, strength work, cardiovascular, and play activities are incorporated as appropriate to develop healthful activities that support well-being.
  • Experiential activities: Community experiences such as cooking, clothes shopping, grocery shopping, and dining at restaurants help the individual strengthen self-expression and gain assertiveness and symptom control.

Recovery is possible. There's help. There's hope.