Inpatient vs. Outpatient Mental Health Treatment for Teen Moms

Published: 07/01/2025 | Updated: 07/01/2025

Authored by: Eilaf Meenai, MD

Edited by: Emma Loker, BSc, PgDip

Teen moms carry emotional burdens that go far beyond the usual challenges of parenting. Many go through trauma, isolation, overwhelming stress, and mood disorders, all while trying to care for a newborn and grow into adulthood themselves.

Research backs all this up. Adolescent mothers are much more likely to experience depression during pregnancy and after giving birth compared to adult mothers and teens who aren’t pregnant.¹

For teen mothers, early access to the right kind of mental health support improves not only their emotional well-being but also their ability to parent and build a stable future for their child. Inpatient and outpatient care are two levels of mental health treatment suited for different emotional and psychological needs.

On this page, you will learn about the differences between inpatient and outpatient therapy, explore the pros and cons of each, and figure out which path is the best fit for you.

Inpatient Treatment for Teen Moms

Inpatient therapy means living full-time at a treatment facility. It’s immersive. You stay on-site 24/7, often for several weeks or months, and receive round-the-clock care. Everything about your day, including meals and sleep routine, is carefully planned out.

It provides a break from unstable home environments or overwhelming pressures, giving teen moms space to heal without worrying about diapers, school deadlines, or emotional triggers. But it also means temporary separation from your baby unless you’re in a specialized mother-and-baby program.

Inpatient treatment can be particularly beneficial if you’re struggling with severe mental health difficulties, which you can be extra vulnerable to as a teen mom. Research shows that pregnancy plays a role in increasing suicidal thoughts among adolescents.²

Pros and Cons of Inpatient Care for Teens

For teen moms struggling with severe mental health problems, inpatient treatment programs provide many benefits, such as:³

Safety and Stability: If you’re dealing with suicidal thoughts, self-harm, panic attacks, trauma flashbacks, or overwhelming depression, it’s incredibly hard to manage all that on your own.
24/7 Support and Supervision: Since you’re never alone or unattended, crisis escalations are often prevented in inpatient settings.
Protection From Unsafe Environments: Inpatient care gives you distance from triggers and gives your brain the quiet it needs to reset, which is much more difficult when you’re in a toxic environment.

However, it doesn’t come without a cost. Some cons of inpatient care include:

Separation From Your Baby: Unless you’re placed in a mother-baby residential facility (which can be hard to find and access), you’ll be apart from your child for the duration of treatment.

Disruption of Routine: School will be put on hold, you may miss important milestones, lose touch with friends, or feel like your life has been paused.

Stigma and Emotional Weight: It’s easy to feel judged for needing inpatient care, or to internalize the idea that you’re “too difficult” to handle.

While these cons can seem scary, they can often be a small price to pay if you’re struggling with your mental health day in and day out. A few weeks at a treatment center can often save you a lifetime of trying to manage severe mental health difficulties.

When Is Inpatient Treatment Recommended?

Inpatient care is the recommended move when your mental health feels out of control or just too much to handle alone.

It’s important to consider inpatient support when:

You’re in a mental health crisis. A crisis is when you experience suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts, self-harm, intense depression or anxiety that’s stopping you from functioning, and episodes of mania, psychosis, or dissociation.
Your home environment isn’t a nurturing environment or is making things worse with domestic violence, constant fighting, instability, and a lack of emotional support.
You’ve tried weekly outpatient therapy and taken medicines, but your symptoms persist.
You’re starting or adjusting psychiatric medication, and you’ve had bad side effects before.
You’re in survival mode 24/7, parenting while feeling empty, angry, or numb, and you can’t imagine holding on much longer without help.

Outpatient Therapy for Teen Moms

Outpatient therapy means getting mental health support while still living at home. You don’t stay overnight at a treatment center. Rather, you go in for therapy sessions and then return to your daily routine, such as caring for your baby and dealing with other responsibilities.

There are different levels of outpatient care depending on how much support you need:

Traditional Outpatient Therapy: This is the most flexible of all. It’s where you just see a therapist once a week for talk therapy for about an hour.
Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOPs): These are more structured. In an IOP, you attend therapy 3–5 days a week for several hours each day. These programs include individual therapy, group sessions, and support for parenting, coping skills, and emotional regulation.⁴
Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHPs): These are full-day programs (often 5–6 hours a day, five days a week), but you still return home. PHPs offer psychiatric care, medication management, trauma therapy, and skill-building. A study found that OB-GYN clinics offering an 8-session, 4-week psychoeducation program for pregnant teens focused on coping, emotional regulation, and social support significantly reduced anxiety and depression in teen mothers.⁵

Pros and Cons of Outpatient Therapy

The biggest benefit of outpatient therapy is the flexibility. You can stay enrolled in school, attend appointments, and maintain social connections instead of hitting the pause button on your life.

Outpatient therapy also helps you apply what you’re learning in real-time. You learn how to calm yourself during a tough moment with your baby, how to respond to triggering family members, and how to manage mood swings during a school day.

You’re not in a facility full-time, so there’s also less social pressure or fear of judgment. Most people in your life will not even know you’re in treatment unless you tell them.

However, it comes with its fair share of cons, too. These include:

No Break From Stress. You have to take care of your mental health in the middle of all your responsibilities, diapers, crying babies, exams, and arguments at home.
Less Emergency Support. If a crisis happens outside therapy hours, you’re largely on your own until your next session.
Requires More Discipline and Consistency. You have to show up, schedule childcare, get to your appointments, and stay engaged throughout. If your environment is chaotic or transportation becomes an issue, you may fall behind.

When Is Outpatient Care a Good Fit?

Outpatient therapy is only suitable if your current situation gives you just enough room to work with it. We recommend considering outpatient care when:

You’re trying to show up to school, parenting, and managing your day, but it feels heavy and emotionally draining.
You feel emotionally stable enough to manage your safety, i.e., not actively suicidal, self-harming, or dealing with severe dissociation or psychosis.
You have a safe(ish) place to live, and your home is not abusive.
You have some support system, even if it’s small, such as a relative who can babysit, a school counselor who checks in, or a friend you can be honest with.
You’re open to talking, reflecting, and trying to apply new coping tools.

Comparing Inpatient vs. Outpatient Teen Mental Health Therapy

There is a stark contrast in the kind of support inpatient and outpatient mental health treatments offer.

Level of Supervision

The most obvious difference between inpatient vs. outpatient mental health treatment is how much support you get and how often.

During inpatient therapy, you’re never alone. There’s 24/7 access to professionals, therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, and mental health techs who check in regularly and offer real-time support when you’re having a hard moment. You don’t have to wait until your next appointment.

Outpatient therapy works differently. You meet with a therapist or counselor for scheduled sessions, and when you leave, you’re on your own. You must be able to practice coping skills, manage mood swings, and handle emotional triggers without immediate backup.

The Difference in Environment

Inpatient care gives you the distance to breathe. It pulls you out of the environment that may be hurting you, such as a chaotic home, a toxic relationship, or a mountain of responsibilities you can’t keep up with. Your only job is to heal.

Outpatient therapy, on the other hand, keeps you in your life. You stay at home. You see your child every day. You go to school, attend appointments, and sleep in your own bed. The tradeoff of this flexibility is that you must do the hard work of healing while still living under the stress of your daily routine.

Structure and Routine

Inpatient therapy is very structured, with all your days planned and a routine scheduled. Therapy groups, check-ins, downtime, and medication rounds are all mapped out for you. Such a routine resets your nervous system and gives your brain space to function again without feeling constantly overwhelmed.

Outpatient care is more flexible. You can schedule sessions around your baby’s naps or school hours, but there’s no one making sure you’re sleeping enough, eating well, or staying on track with goals.

If you already feel unmotivated, outpatient care feels like just one more thing to juggle on an already maxed-out day.

Effectiveness

Neither inpatient nor outpatient care is “better” across the board; they’re just different tools for different levels of need.

For adolescents in acute mental health crises, inpatient care has shown good results. It is most effective for teens experiencing suicidality, psychosis, or severe emotional dysregulation when shorter stays are paired with step-down outpatient therapy after discharge. Programs that include family therapy and post-hospital planning (instead of just crisis stabilization) tend to have better long-term outcomes.⁶

Outpatient therapy is effective for teen moms with mild to moderate mental health symptoms. Evidence-based approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy (IPT), and trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT) during outpatient therapy are equally helpful.⁷

How to Decide if You Need Inpatient vs. Outpatient Care as a Teen Mom?

The decision to choose between an inpatient vs. outpatient mental health program requires you to figure out what kind of support fits your life, your emotional state, your safety, and your future as both a person and a parent.

There’s no shame in needing more help, and no badge of honor for “toughing it out” when you’re barely holding on. Here are some factors you should look at when making your decision:

Severity of Your Mental Health Condition: Inpatient care is likely best for you if you’re facing severe depression, suicidal thoughts, trauma, or can’t function day-to-day. Outpatient care fits best for mild to moderate symptoms, where you can still manage basic routines.
Personal Preferences: Some teen moms are more comfortable easing into care slowly, starting with weekly outpatient sessions. Others feel like their environment is so toxic or unstable that unless they fully remove themselves, healing won’t happen. The right decision is the one that you think is best for you.
Family and Social Support: If you have supportive people around who can help you with the baby and listen without judgment, an outpatient plan will work out for you. But if your home environment is part of the problem, inpatient care will be a safer option.
Financial Factors: Generally, outpatient care is more affordable than inpatient programs. However, check with your insurance program, and if your mental state requires it, do not shy away from inpatient settings.
Location and Accessibility: If you can’t get to regular therapy due to distance or transport issues, inpatient programs with onsite care are more convenient than struggling to attend weekly sessions.

Get the Best Mental Health Care for Teen Moms at Mission Prep

At Mission Prep, we understand how difficult it is for young moms to get the right kind of mental health care.

Our team conducts in-depth assessments to help determine which level of care is the best fit for you between our highly structured residential program and the more flexible outpatient services that allow you to stay connected to your baby and daily life.

Call us now to find yourself a compassionate space to heal, whether it’s inpatient or outpatient.

References

Hodgkinson, S., Beers, L., Southammakosane, C., & Lewin, A. (2014). Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents. Pediatrics, 133(1), 114–122. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-0927
Fletcher, T. M., Markley, L. A., Nelson, D., Crane, S. S., & Fitzgibbon, J. J. (2015). Pregnant Adolescents Admitted to an Inpatient Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit: An Eight-Year Review. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 28(6), 477–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpag.2015.01.005
Weber, C., Monero Flores, V., Wheele, T. P., Miedema, E., & White, E. V. (2022). Patients’ Health & Well-Being in Inpatient Mental Health-Care Facilities: A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.758039
SAMHSA. (2006). Chapter 8. Intensive Outpatient Treatment Approaches. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64102/
Ediz, Ç., & Kavak Budak, F. (2023). Effects of psychosocial support-based psychoeducation for Turkish pregnant adolescents on anxiety, depression and perceived social support: a randomized controlled study. Rural and Remote Health, 23(3), 7553. https://doi.org/10.22605/RRH7553
Johnson, S., Dalton‐Locke, C., Baker, J., Hanlon, C., Salisbury, T. T., Fossey, M., Newbigging, K., Carr, S. E., Hensel, J., Carrà, G., Hepp, U., Caneo, C., Needle, J. J., & Lloyd‐Evans, B. (2022). Acute psychiatric care: approaches to increasing the range of services and improving access and quality of care. World Psychiatry, 21(2), 220–236. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20962
Driessen, M., Schulz, P., Jander, S., Ribbert, H., Gerhards, S., Neuner, F., & Koch-Stoecker, S. (2019). Effectiveness of inpatient versus outpatient complex treatment programs in depressive disorders: a quasi-experimental study under naturalistic conditions. BMC Psychiatry, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2371-5