Cornerstones of Maine

08/05/2026

Drs. Jacob Gelles and Joshua Altschule built Cornerstones because they were working with young adults who needed something that didn't exist yet: a program with genuine clinical rigor in an environment that felt human.

That origin shapes what the program is today. Clinician-owned means the people who understand the work are the people accountable for it. It means that when clinical best practices evolve, the organization evolves. It means a struggling young adult's care isn't filtered through layers of administrative decision-making before it reaches the people who can act on it.

For families navigating one of the hardest decisions they'll make as parents, it means a lot to know who built the program and why.

Learn more at: https://cornerstonesofmaine.com/

07/29/2026

For a lot of the young people who come through Cornerstone’s residential program, it's the first time in years that life has felt like it has some forward momentum.

Clients leave Cornerstones of Maine with a real transition plan, a clearer sense of what they're capable of, and skills that’ll carry forward. For many families, it's the turning point they've been hoping for.

07/22/2026

The young adults who come to Cornerstones’ residential program don't fit a single profile.
Some are college students who've had to take medical leave. Some are in their mid-twenties, still at home, struggling with depression or anxiety that has quietly narrowed their world over years. Some have been to outpatient therapy and found it helpful but not sufficient. Some are stepping down from a hospital stay and not yet ready to manage daily life independently.

The clinical presentations vary. The diagnoses vary. What tends to be consistent is a pattern of trying things that haven't produced the kind of change needed to build a life.
Residential treatment at Cornerstones is designed for that moment, when more is clearly needed and the question is what, exactly, more should look like.

Call today to learn more: 207-994-8993

07/16/2026

A note from our Executive Director, Eric on what we mean when we call our residential program a clinical intensive, and why that distinction is important for the young adults we work with.

Spoiler: it has a lot to do with what happens outside the therapy room.

Read the blog here: https://cornerstonesofmaine.com/blog/rtc-evolved

Meet the young adult treatment and transitional living team at Cornerstones of Maine in Portland, Biddeford, Kennebunkport, and more.

07/15/2026

Structure sets up the healing process.

At Cornerstones of Maine, the structure is always therapeutic. It looks like a consistent daily rhythm that includes individual therapy, peer group sessions, psychiatric support, and evidence-based skill-building.

It looks like shared meals and rebuilding healthy sleep patterns that have been dysregulated for months or years. It looks like time outdoors along the Maine coast.

Young adults who arrive exhausted, overwhelmed, and skeptical about whether anything can help, describe the first few weeks as the first time in a long time that life has felt manageable. That's what the structure is designed to produce.

See the full program at cornerstonesofmaine.com/young-adults-residential-treatment.

07/08/2026

Most parents researching options for a struggling young adult find themselves looking at two ends of a very wide spectrum: weekly therapy on one side, inpatient hospitalization on the other.

Residential treatment at Cornerstones of Maine is designed specifically for that in-between space.

Young adults who are in need but don't require hospital-level care. Young adults for whom weekly therapy has stopped being enough, but whose needs don't rise to the level of acute psychiatric hospitalization.

The program runs between 30 & 60 days and includes individual therapy, psychiatric support, group work, family sessions, and clinical modalities like CBT and DBT delivered within a structured daily routine.

For parents who feel like they've run out of options, Cornerstones exists for you.
Learn more: 207-994-8993

05/21/2026

Our Executive Director Eric Beaudoin, Psy.D., joined Zack from Mountain Valley Recovery on the Fear Less podcast to talk about something that comes up often in our work with young adults: the rise of late autism diagnoses.

Their conversation covers the overlap between autism, anxiety, developmental delays, and social skill deficits, and raises the question about whether some young adults are being diagnosed based on incomplete assessment.

More than that, it's a dialogue on the importance of building real-world skills, a sense of identity, and a life that has meaning independent of any label.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7gDdM5pbyadFX9qgazwkft?si=mVy_RSGHR_K7OZBmZoAQDQ&nd=1&dlsi=efc0ae67a32f4ec2

05/20/2026

At Cornerstones, executive function support is woven into the texture of daily life. Coaches work alongside young adults during morning routines, work preparation, managing a living space, recovering from a setback without losing the rest of the day to avoidance.

The strategies built in those moments come from real information about how a specific person functions under real conditions. Not how they think they function, but how they actually navigate the day when things are hard.

That requires trained observation, sound clinical judgment, and the ability to support someone without doing the task for them.

Lean the full scope of the program: 207-994-8993

05/13/2026

Most organizational tools are designed as aids for people who already have the executive functions needed to use them.

A calendar works if working memory is strong enough to think to check it. A to-do list works if emotional regulation is stable enough to approach it without anxiety triggering avoidance.

When those underlying capacities are impaired, the tool doesn't solve the problem. It creates a slightly different version of the same problem + guilt about not using the tool.

Skilled executive function coaching starts from a realistic assessment of which capacities are present and which need external compensation. For one young adult that might mean environmental redesign. For another, time-anchoring routines. For another, emotional regulation strategies that reduce avoidance enough to make initiation possible.

None of it comes from a template. That's the point. Call Cornerstones today to learn more about our Executive Function Coaching. 207-994-8993

05/06/2026

Task initiation is the ability to begin something. Not to plan it or intend to do it, but to actually start.

For many people this happens with low effort. For young adults with impaired task initiation, starting requires a level of internal activation that isn't available on demand. It's not that they don't understand the urgency. It's that the neurological bridge between intention and action isn't firing reliably.

A good executive function coach helps build external structures that reduce the activation cost of starting, until internal capacity develops enough to support more independence.