Conceptualizing structure in a day treatment program for delinquent adolescents.

While effective limit-setting is essential to the treatment of delinquents, the burden of providing the necessary structure is likely to be too great for the staff worker to sustain on his own. A program is described in which structure was conceptualized as existing simultaneously at different levels--the physical space, the programmatic organization, and the worker-patient bond--thereby providing programmatic support to the worker in his relationship to patients.