Luxury Treatment in New England: A Visit to McLean Hospital

While New England might not be the first place that comes to mind when thinking of luxury addiction treatment in the U.S., McLean Hospital’s Signature Recovery Program definitely puts it on the map. As a Harvard Medical School affiliate, McLean offers a level of clinical excellence that can be hard to find in addiction treatment. Its 2 beautiful locations include McLean Fernside in a historic bed and breakfast overlooking the city of Boston in the distance, and McLean Borden Cottage in a spectacular mansion on Penobscot Bay. This facility’s accommodations hold their own against the best luxury centers out there.

Watch as our team gets an inside look into McLean’s Signature Recovery Program.

Steeped in History

Arguably the most historic region in the United States, New England is home to Revolutionary War battlefields, quaint small towns, and historic institutions. One such institution is McLean Hospital, founded in 1811. Originally a mental health facility, in the late 1960s McLean recognized the importance of treating addiction and began offering addiction treatment programs. They now offer programs across the spectrum of care at a number of locations. Paired with another historical institution, Harvard (which is in fact the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S.), McLean has hundreds of years of experience and some of the greatest minds in the world to draw from.

Administration building on McLean’s main campus in Belmont, MA

Evidence-Based Care

“Our Signature Recovery Programs are based on proven methods and scientific inquiry that informs treatment.”

– Rocco A. Iannucci, MD, Mclean Fernside Director

As a treatment program embedded in a research hospital, the decisions made at McLean Signature Recovery are based on research and evidence-based practices. That shone through especially when discussing their thoughts on group therapy. Typically, a luxury center might de-emphasize group therapy, but at McLean they believe it to be an important part of treatment.

One of the rooms typically used for group therapy at McLean Borden Cottage

As McLean Fernside’s Director Dr. Rocco Iannucci explains, “Group therapy has been shown to be uniquely effective for treatment of substance use problems. There’s a way in which peer-to-peer interactions that are facilitated by an experienced and well-trained clinician can really add to recovery in a way that just the one-on-one interactions may not. People can bond with each other. They can communicate with each other in a different sort of way.”