Expert mental health care for kids & teens in New York City

Brightline supports kids and teens up to age 18. Teens who turn 18 while in our care will continue to receive support as appropriate and if needed, we will create a transition plan for them.

We provide specialized mental health care for kids and teens up to age 18, and we rely heavily on evidence-based approaches and state-of-the-science care. Everything you need is in one place — as your child’s needs change, their care plan will evolve.

Ask us! We will have a structured, in-depth conversation with you and your child to gather details about your child’s developmental history, patterns or changes you’ve noticed, and any concerns you have. Together, we will decide whether your child could benefit from therapy or another type of support. 

It depends on what your child needs. Your child’s therapist will partner with you to create an individualized care plan. Part of the plan will include an estimated number of sessions. The number can vary based on two things — the program your child is in and how they progress over time. Our goal is to help your child feel better and to move them out of care once they are equipped with the skills they need to thrive long term.

At Brightline, parents are closely involved in their child’s care. Why? Because it’s central to the way we work (and it’s a core part of the evidence-based care we rely on). This is true both for younger kids and for teenagers. Your involvement might look different depending on your child’s age, developmental ability, and program. We’ll keep the discussion of how/why/why ongoing.

For very young children, parents are a huge part of their child’s care. The parent is the one with the fully developed brain — which means you’re also the one with the hindsight, insight, and foresight to integrate what we do in our sessions into the daily life of your young child. The way we train parents empowers them to use the skills that help with all the tiny, day-to-day interventions. This is so much more effective than having a clinician work with a child one-on-one for an hour a week and then just sending them home. During parent training sessions, sometimes kids are present, sometimes not. For example, if you're here because your child is experiencing separation anxiety, we might practice independence or separating from you, the parent, as part of their treatment.

For kids in this middle age group, parents should expect to be involved in every session. In some situations, they might even be more involved than their child. For others, parents will need to check in at the beginning or the end of the sessions. And in some cases, the involvement might be more evenly split or include more shared time. The specifics have a lot to do with why you're coming to care and the care plan you co-design with your clinician.

Even with teenagers, parents should still expect to be heavily involved. If they aren’t part of every session, it’s likely they’ll be part of every other. Typically, this looks like parents checking in at the beginning or the end of the session.

When we say parents are checking in, we don’t mean that we're telling you everything your child said or did when you weren’t there. (People would stop coming to us for care!) Instead, during the check-in time with parents, we’re relying on you for updates about how things have gone over the past week. We’ll ask you what changes you see, about the current symptoms or issues, and your point of view on how skills practice has been going. We’ll also fill you in on any new goals or skills that the child is expected to practice in the upcoming week; the more you know what your child is working on, the more you can support — and not accidentally work against the plan. Lastly, these check-ins are also for you to receive the guidance you need. We know kids don’t come with instructions, so a big part of our job is to teach you the skills you need to rely on during all those hours between sessions.

All Brightline therapists and coaches use evidence-based therapies in their care approach. Some examples include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Parent Management Training (PMT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). All intervention strategies offered at Brightline are supported by research that shows they work for the types of issues you’re looking to address, and are matched to your child’s needs.

Yes. We offer general therapy to support a variety of common mental health challenges, along with four focused programs that specifically address anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and disruptive behaviors. All of our programs can include psychiatry, which means that if medication is recommended as part of your child’s progress, you don’t have to go anywhere else to bring that treatment into the care plan.

Generally speaking, therapy runs anywhere between 8–16 sessions, and a typical course of psychiatry (including medication management appointments) is between 6–10 sessions. But how long your child stays in treatment depends on what they’re going through and how they respond to care. You’ll get an estimated length of care after your child’s diagnostic evaluation.

As evidence-based care devotees, we champion lifelong learning and continuing education. Our training director builds learning programs based on the latest research for our team. We hold weekly team meetings and consultation groups (including one-on-one meetings with managers) during which we discuss our clinical approach. Performance evaluations and quality oversight are both closely aligned with our evidence-based practice approach. Lastly, we invest in learning! Our teams receive professional development funds to make it easier for them to keep learning.