Mental Health

Grief care, on your timeline, not the world’s hurry.

Outpatient grief and loss treatment in Lakeway, Texas. Complicated grief therapy, CBT for grief, interpersonal therapy, and group support prescribed by your comprehensive assessment, not pulled from a default protocol. Same-day or next-day admission.

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Same-day or next-day admission Comprehensive assessment Most insurance accepted
A woman in her late 50s with silver hair in a soft low bun, oat-linen tunic and dark wide-leg linen trousers, seated three-quarter profile on a sun-warmed weathered limestone garden bench in a Hill Country side garden, hands folded gently in her lap, calm grounded reflective gaze toward the soft middle distance, terracotta-potted agave at the bench edge, native silver salvia and lavender in nearby beds, weathered cedar gate behind, late golden afternoon light.

Recognizing Grief

When grief stops moving.

Most adults reach a more integrated form of mourning within the first year. When the loss is still organizing your year past that point, the grief itself is treatable.

About 2.5 million people die in the United States each year, and each death leaves a wider circle of family, partners, and close friends inside the grief that follows (HHS ASPE). For most adults, the most intense weight of grief softens over the first year. For roughly 7 to 10 percent of bereaved adults, the grief organizes into a longer pattern, one the DSM-5-TR formally recognized in 2022 as prolonged grief disorder (American Psychiatric Association). At The Stepwell Center, the first question is rarely whether you should still be grieving. The question is what your grief is doing to the shape of your life, and whether it has stopped moving.

Grief is not a single experience. The grief of a long expected death moves differently than the grief of a sudden one. The grief of a parent moves differently than the grief of a spouse, a sibling, a friend, or a child. A loss that arrives layered with trauma, complicated relationship history, or unfinished conversation often carries threads that quiet support alone cannot loosen. Grief specific therapies, including Complicated Grief Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for grief, interpersonal therapy, and structured bereavement groups, have strong evidence in randomized trials and are central to how Stepwell treats this work (NIH). Grief sits inside our broader mental health treatment work, alongside depression, anxiety, and PTSD, conditions that often run beside an unresolved loss.

Your plan begins with a 2 to 3 day comprehensive assessment that integrates clinical interview, qEEG brain mapping, pharmacogenetic testing when medication is on the table, and standardized psychological testing. The assessment distinguishes a normal grief trajectory from prolonged grief disorder, from depression, and from any trauma response that may have woven into the loss. The output is a written care plan matched to your clinical profile and delivered across four levels of outpatient care: PHP, IOP, Evening IOP, and Outpatient. All four levels are delivered at our Lakeway, Texas facility in the Lake Travis corridor.

How We Treat Grief

Six modalities, matched to your loss.

Specific evidence-based grief modalities, named in your prescribed plan rather than left implicit. Your combination is chosen from these and others based on your assessment.

  1. Complicated Grief Therapy

    A structured sixteen session protocol developed by Dr. Katherine Shear that combines elements of CBT, interpersonal therapy, and prolonged exposure to support reengagement with daily life. The primary modality when the assessment surfaces prolonged grief disorder.

  2. CBT for grief

    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy adapted to grief identifies the avoidance loops and thought patterns that hold grief in place, and rebuilds activity and connection in small structured steps. Used as a primary or adjunct modality depending on the presentation.

  3. Interpersonal Therapy

    IPT works the relational ground around the loss, including role transitions, conflict, and isolation. Often a strong fit when the grief arrives layered with a life-stage shift, an estranged relationship, or an unfinished conversation with the person who died.

  4. Bereavement groups

    Structured group therapy with others holding similar losses. Group work is a core element of grief treatment because it directly counters the isolation that prolonged grief tends to harden. Used inside PHP and IOP and continued through step-down.

  5. Family & couples work

    When a death has reorganized a household, family or couples sessions are added to the plan so the grief is held collectively rather than alone. Particularly indicated when children are also grieving or when partners are grieving on different timelines.

  6. Trauma-focused therapy

    When the death was sudden, violent, or traumatic, EMDR or trauma-focused CBT is layered into the grief work to address the trauma response before or alongside the grief itself. Used when the assessment identifies trauma threads woven through the loss.

A man in his late 50s with salt-and-pepper short hair and a close-trimmed beard, oat-linen overshirt rolled at the cuffs and dark olive linen trousers, crouching three-quarter profile at a raised limestone garden bed in a Hill Country backyard, hands cupping soil around a young plant he is gently setting into the bed, terracotta-potted lavender and agave nearby, weathered cedar trellis with climbing rosemary at the right edge, warm early-morning Hill Country light with dappled live-oak shade.

The Prescribed Care Model

Holding the whole shape of the loss.

Grief rarely shows up alone. It often arrives laced with depression, anxiety, sleep disruption, and a re-evaluation of nearly everything that organized the years before the loss. A treatment plan that addresses only the sadness tends to leave the rest pulling against the work. Stepwell's Prescribed Care Model assembles a plan that holds the whole shape of the loss, the role transition around it, and the relationships still standing.

After your assessment, your prescribed plan names the level of care, the modality mix, and any medication considerations that fit you specifically. You might begin in PHP for the first weeks when grief has fully reorganized daily function, then step down to IOP three days per week, then continue in standard Outpatient as the grief integrates, all with the same clinical team. If work or family obligations make daytime sessions impossible, Evening IOP delivers the same clinical content after hours.

For many patients, the grief work is paired with one or two related threads. Depression commonly shares ground with prolonged grief and is distinguished, not collapsed into the loss, during the assessment. An unprocessed trauma response can underwrite a chronic grief pattern when the death was sudden or violent. Anxiety often arrives in the second six months as the work of rebuilding begins. Those threads are integrated into the same plan rather than handed off to a separate provider.

By the Numbers

Grief in perspective .

US deaths annually

US deaths annually

Each leaving a wider circle of bereaved (HHS ASPE)

Develop prolonged grief

Develop prolonged grief

Of bereaved adults, per recent meta-analyses

Day assessment

Day assessment

Before any plan is written

Levels of care

Levels of care

PHP, IOP, Evening IOP, Outpatient

Find the level that fits.

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Common Questions

What people ask about grief treatment.

Pulled from the questions families and prospective patients ask most often when considering outpatient grief and loss care.

Clinical Perspective

Grief is not a problem to solve, it is a shape to learn. The work is to read how the loss has reorganized a life, then to build the plan to that, not to a default protocol. When the plan fits the specific loss, life starts to widen again before the calendar finishes its first year.

The Stepwell clinical team