McLean's Mental Health Community Support Recovery Program at Waverley Place

About the program

Waverley Place is a community-based support program for adults facing mental health challenges. The program offers a recovery-focused, non-clinical environment where members can build connection, independence, and self-reliance.

Located a half-mile from McLean Hospital’s Belmont campus, Waverley Place supports adults with mood and anxiety disorders, changes in thinking or concentration, or experiences such as hearing, seeing, or sensing things others do not.

Members choose how they want to use the program, based on their needs and goals. Through a warm, welcoming setting, Waverley Place emphasizes empowerment, self-determination, and meaningful support from peers and staff.

Mass General Brigham is a leader in mental health and psychiatric care, with McLean Hospital serving as a world leader in care, research, and education.

Part of Mental Health and Psychiatric Services

Support and services

Waverley Place provides community-based support ranging from group sessions on crucial topics to a comfortable and safe space to engage with other individuals in recovery.

Community members determine which services they engage in and how often they participate. Daily activities include open discussion, groups, workshops, classes, and the opportunity for members to facilitate or co-facilitate groups.

The weekly schedule includes group sessions focused on topics such as interpersonal skills, independent living, spirituality, finding meaningful work, and living a full life as defined by each individual.

Shared activities include board games, art, writing, music, gardening, cooking, and cognitive games. Waverley Place also offers fitness groups, including yoga, meditation, stretching, group walks, and trips to the gym.

At Waverley Place, we understand that support and access to resources are crucial to sustained recovery. With this in mind, our staff helps members establish and carry out personal goals.

Mutual peer support from community members helps individuals engage in meaningful activities and roles. We provide many opportunities to have conversations about stigma, discrimination, self-stigma, advocacy, and empowerment.

We support members in their vocational pursuits by facilitating trips to job fairs, career centers, and local businesses.

In addition, we offer guidance, referrals, and tools to connect members with outside services to assist with meeting vocational, educational, housing, financial, wellness, and personal needs, including access to trained benefits specialists.

Planned and impromptu social activities take place both within the program and in the larger community.

Outings include visits to local coffee shops, stores, farms, museums, art stores, and restaurants. Seasonal outings may bring members to beaches, parks, amusement parks, and orchards. Special events include open mic nights, cookouts, holiday parties, and organizational walks, such as the annual National Alliance on Mental Illness walk.

Members also have access to computers, art supplies, a garden, meditation space, and a local athletic club.

Sharing lived experience

Waverley Place offers members the ability to work one-on-one with a certified peer specialist.

Peer specialists share their diverse lived experiences of mental health recovery and carry the message that recovery is possible. In sharing their wisdom, strength, and hope, certified peer specialists significantly impact people’s beliefs about their own capacity to recover.

Peer specialists inspire healing through modeling and commonality. They meet people where they are at in their recovery and inspire them with the courage to act. Certified peer specialists work with members to identify and combat self-stigma, to advocate for themselves, and to treat themselves with kindness and compassion.

Our certified peer specialists receive rigorous training and are certified by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

Join Waverley Place

Admission

Individuals interested in becoming members of Waverley Place can be self-referred, referred by McLean providers, or referred by programs and providers in the greater community. For further information, please contact 617-484-0193.

Cost

There is a monthly membership fee of $300; however, for members who qualify, the fee is reduced on a sliding scale.