What makes Oxbow Academy Psychosexual Evaluation different from sending your son to a local psychologist to receive one? The answer is simple. The evaluation is only as good as the information provided.
Sending your son to a psychologist in your area means they will work with him for only a few hours. The psychologist will gather information during that time and must trust that your son is fully disclosing everything.
Oxbow Academy has an in-depth process that will provide you with a more comprehensive psychosexual evaluation than any other health service. As a result, the recommendations will be more reliable. The process takes about 90-days.
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Assessing Sexual Health: Oxbow Academy's Comprehensive Evaluation
When their son's sexual health is at stake, many parents wonder how severe their son's sexual risk behaviors are. Understanding adolescent sexual behavior is a challenge. It can be difficult for parents to discern healthy sexual development from serious risk factors. Parents need to know if their son needs further help through public health programs, education programs, residential treatment, or other primary care services.
Oxbow Academy provides young people with the most comprehensive evaluation possible. Trained mental health professionals conduct the evaluation. It also provides age-appropriate sexual health education.
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Highly Experienced and Certified Sex Addiction (CSAT) Therapists
A highly trained therapist establishes a safe therapeutic relationship with your son. The mental health professional assigned will have specialized training in adolescent health. The therapist will work hard to build rapport with your son. This bond will help your son feel comfortable talking about challenging subjects like sexual activity.
Talking about sexual issues often involves feelings of shame and embarrassment. These feelings often make it tempting for students to maintain unhealthy secrets.
Oxbow Academy is a member of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), which means the school's therapists know what questions to ask your son and are willing to ask the difficult questions.
Also, all Oxbow Academy therapists have, or are pursuing, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) training. This certification is valuable because it provides therapists with the tools they need to treat sex addiction.
CSAT training helps the therapist be able to create a safe therapeutic relationship so the students feel comfortable talking about this difficult topic. The therapist knows what questions to ask, how to ask the really hard questions, and help students move out of the shame so they can start the healing process.
It helps therapists also know how to create a safe therapeutic relationship so that the student feels comfortable talking about these difficult topics.
To earn CSAT certification, our therapists undertake one year of intense training, followed by 30+ hours of consultation from a Certified Sexual Addiction Therapist Supervisor. Certified sex addiction therapists are recognized as experts in the field of sexual behavorial and addiction therapy.
Therapists working at Oxbow Academy understand the difference between age-appropriate common sexual behaviors and possible sexual behavior problems.
Throughout the treatment process, your son's well-being will be the highest priority. He will meet with a therapist who understands his treatment needs and can address any potential sexual behavior problems.
A Homogeneous Group Setting
Your son will be in a homogenous group setting where all the other boys in the program are going through the same process. He will not feel alone with what he is going through and realize that other boys his age struggle with similar issues.
A therapist is present during these discussions. This trained mental health professional monitors the things the boys share. The therapist ensures that sharing happens in an accountable manner. Boys are not allowed to glorify their behavior. For example, they are not allowed to have inappropriate conversations about sexual interests or history.
A Sexual History Disclosure
As your son meets with his therapist, he will begin disclosing a sexual history. This sexual history will go over anyone or anything with whom he has been sexually engaged. It will include the kind of pornography he has viewed, how often he has watched the pornography and for how long.
He will also talk about how he was able to view pornography. He then would create what is called a sexual disclosure. This disclosure helps put his sexual history into accountable language. The disclosure also clarifies which sexual encounters were consensual or non-consensual.
This sexual disclosure will use appropriate and accountable language going over everything your son has done. The process will also consider inappropriate content, such as pornography, to which he may have been exposed.
During this process he will also receive a sex education, learning the rules of consent, laws around illegal sexual behaviors and healthy sexual boundaries. Even at the end of the evaluation process if a student does not need further treatment at Oxbow Academy, this process will provide a preventative approach. Students will better understand what would be a healthy sexual relationship.
This process of developing a disclosure and offering education can take anywhere from 4–8 weeks because it takes time to build rapport and help your son feel safe to disclose difficult and shameful situations.
Third-Party Validation
At the end of this process, he will validate his story with a clinical polygraph. Most people think of polygraphs as lie detector tests used to catch criminals. That is not how Oxbow Academy uses clinical polygraphs. The polygraph is a health care tool. It helps your son validate his truth and start the healing process out of his shame.
The purpose of the polygraph is to help him pass, not to catch him in a lie. Validating his story by taking a polygraph helps him reestablish a relationship with the truth and rebuild trust with his parents.
Every student who comes to Oxbow Academy takes a polygraph, which allows your son to get support from his peers who have taken it before him. Getting help from his peers can be a very supportive and essential step for your son to start the healing process and realize that he is not alone.
A clinical polygraph is one of the most critical tools that Oxbow Academy uses to ensure appropriate health outcomes. It also distinguishes Oxbow Academy’s evaluation process. Unlike other programs, the school does not simply send students to get a psychosexual evaluation. Our process allows for the full truth to be presented and results in more accurate evaluation results.
Third-Party Psychosexual Evaluation
Once your son successfully passes his polygraph, you will have an accurate picture of everything that is going on. You will choose a psychologist from a list of independent professionals local to our area to evaluate your son. Of course, there are psychologists that we can recommend to you, yet ultimately it is your decision whom you want to use. This freedom of choice allows you a psychologist to provide unbiased recommendations of what your son needs.
That psychologist will then gather all the information about your son to determine your son's risk level.
The data will include:
- your son's full sexual disclosure,
- his passed polygraph,
- a write-up from his therapist,
- information from academic and residential departments about how your son progressed in the program, and
- a complete psychosexual evaluation.
All of this combined information helps determine your son's level of risk. The psychologist will decide if your son is low, moderate, or at high risk of sexually acting out. Based on this determination, the psychologist will suggest if he needs long-term sex-specific treatment at Oxbow Academy or different treatment all together.
If your son receives a recommendation to attend Oxbow Academy, he will also have an individualized treatment plan.
Our objective is to complete this evaluation process within 90-days. Yet, there are certain cases where it could take shorter or longer, depending on your son's engagement with the process.
Engagement in the Residential Program
While your son is going through the evaluation process, he will have access to our full residential program. This program includes clinical services, academic services, residential services. However, your son will be separated residentially, and clinically from the other students who have completed the evaluation process.
Students who completed their 90-day evaluation and determined appropriate to continue their treatment at Oxbow Academy are in separate residential areas. This separation provides your son with a safe environment to go through the evaluation process. He will be safe while professionals determine what type of help your son needs.
The 90-day evaluation is also a period where he is also going over healthy sexual education with his therapist. Young men exposed to pornography do not understand sexual health.
Some young people may not understand the importance of consent in sexual intercourse, other sexual issues. For example, many young adults do not understand the risk of sexually transmitted infections, the importance of birth control and the boundaries of a healthy consensual sexual relationships.
During this time, trained professionals will also educate your son on healthy and consensual boundaries around sexual relationships. He will gain a better understanding of sex education and reproductive health, including issues like teen pregnancy.
Before coming to Oxbow Academy, many high school students get information about sex from social media. Social media is an unreliable source of information that may promote sexual risk behaviors. While at Oxbow Academy, your son will learn about consent, legal versus illegal sexual behavior, and healthy sexual behavior.
Education about sexual health education is one of many critical protective factors that encourages positive health outcomes. Therefore, this information provides a preventative measure even if your son doesn't need to attend Oxbow Academy long-term after the evaluation period.
The education your son will receive will result in risk reduction. Lastly, you will know if your son needs residential care for sex-specific issues or needs another treatment form. You will have a clear direction on how to get the help your son needs.
Ultimately, at the end of the psychosexual evaluation, family members will have a deeper understanding of their son's needs. In the end, families receive specific recommendations based upon the most comprehensive assessment possible.
Many parents find it difficult to tell healthy curiosity about sex from a potentially dangerous situation. There are clinical evaluations that can help make that determination easier. One of these evaluations is the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST).
On the SAST, you will answer a series of simple yes or no questions about their teen. The answers are completely confidential. No information connects you to your assessment. After you complete the SAST, you will be taken to a new page that shows a score representing the level of risk.
After you get your score, you will have the chance to request a call from someone who can help answer your questions. You will only be contacted if you make a request. Whether you request a call or not, your information will remain confidential, and you will be under no obligation.
