You Know Damn Well You Shouldn't Be Drinking, and You Can't Stop.

From the Archives: In 1976, Mona Mansell was on a mission.

“I was lucky enough to have a Park Avenue apartment, a nice house in the country, a husband who is working on Wall Street and six super children,” said Mona Mansell, founder of Freedom Institute. “For God’s Sake, you have everything. I would ask myself ‘Why do you drink?’ You feel so guilty, so guilty for what you're doing because you know damn well you shouldn't be drinking, and you can't stop.”

Mona Mansell was a recovering alcoholic and a volunteer counselor at the National Council on Alcoholism in New York when she started Freedom Institute in 1976. That year, she had visited the Johnson Institute in Minneapolis, Minn., which had developed a technique called Intervention in which family and friends persuaded alcoholics to enter treatment.

Having seen the effects of her alcoholism on her own family and motivated by a desire to help others become sober, Mona formed one of the country’s first intervention programs, unique in its involvement of family members in the client’s treatment and recovery process, and Freedom Institute was born.

Mona Mansell brought the process of intervention to New York for the first time. In the 1970s, substance abuse treatment consisted primarily of inpatient programs, and Mona helped hundreds of people find appropriate treatment after intervention, while providing ongoing support to their families. She was a very determined lady who wanted to help families who had struggled as hers had.  At the time, everybody said it was too revolutionary and she couldn't do it, but you don’t say that to Mona Mansell. It was exactly what she did. 

From the outset, she was determined that Freedom Institute address the needs of the whole family, not just the identified patient. “Once I was into my own recovery I began to see what a horrible problem my drinking was to all the family members,” said Mona Mansell. “I felt strongly that the most important part of an intervention is preparing that family, every member of that family well. We will never, never do an intervention until we ask each person taking part in it if they feel really comfortable. Feeling scared is okay, but everyone feeling thoroughly comfortable is essential.” 

From the early days of Freedom Institute, Mona Mansell made sure that every person was treated individually. You were not just another chemically addicted person; everyone was given individual attention, and everybody was treated with a great deal of respect and care. “Frankly I feel it's our responsibility to do so.” Her vision and mission were carried forward to today.

The first family groups started at Freedom Institute in 1999. To this day, healing families is central to our mission and we are recognized as the leader at the intersection of family therapy and substance abuse treatment.

Today, Freedom Institute is a state-of-the art not-for-profit outpatient treatment and recovery center that provides a range of innovative, evidenced-based treatment services for adults, young adults and their families. Remaining dedicated to our founder’s vision, we are the only center in the country to combine Intensive Outpatient Programming with a family systems approach, offering an integration ofDialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Relational Family Therapy. 

We work with individuals 18 years or older and their families and support our clients at all stages of recovery. We start by conducting a highly specialized in-depth assessment conducted by two therapists and including key family members in order to design a custom treatment program to meet each person’s stage of life, phase of recovery and specific clinical needs. Within each phase of treatment, we recommend a specific combination of services for the client, as well as specific services for the family as a whole. 

We recognize that adults and young adults with Substance Use Disorders have different needs based on their phase of life. We factor this into our treatment recommendations and how we work with clients individually and with their families. 

Freedom Institute provides a higher quality of outpatient care tailored to the specific needs of our clients than any other outpatient provider in the New York metropolitan area.

#peoplerecoverhere, #familiesrecoverhere