Aris Clinic was founded by Shalene Kennedy, MD to help address the significant lack of mental health services currently available to children and teens in the Twin Cities. Aris Clinic provides services to kids and teens struggling with emotional and behavioral issues.
Its new Woodwinds campus houses an intensive outpatient program (IOP)for grades K-12. The building is designed on a picturesque 21 acres with an abundance of outdoor activity spaces, supporting a whole-body approach to wellness that promotes adequate nutrition, sleep, exercise and time in the outdoors. Children take a 6- to 8-week leave from their normal school to visit Aris Clinic Monday through Friday for 6 to 7 hours daily. They spend half of their time in therapeutic programming (art, exercise, outdoors, therapy, animal therapy) to learn social and emotional skills, and the other half in classroom instruction by teachers who specialize in home treatment programs.
This approach allows children to keep up on their education while learning to recover from and cope with mental health challenges. It also allows children to build stronger connections with their families by keeping them engaged in making changes to support their child outside of the therapy environment.