Social and emotional support for the whole family

Thrive Program at the Heart Center

Learning that your child has heart disease often comes as a shock. Children with heart disease and their families commonly experience emotional challenges, and we know that the right support and treatment can restore a sense of balance and well-being.

To help you and your child cope with heart disease and live a high-quality life, we have created the Thrive Program—one of a handful of such programs in the nation—which offers emotional/social support and mental health care for patients, parents, and families across our Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center. Our Thrive Program seeks to support children of all ages with all types of heart disease and their families. We provide several research-based mental health services.

Thrive Program highlights

  • Whole-child, whole-family care. No one should have to face heart disease alone. By supporting you and your family from the moment of diagnosis, including prenatally, we aim to help you and your child thrive, not just survive. Our support and care is combined with our medical and brain and body developmental care to help your child face the challenges of heart disease and improve their overall health and well-being. We are here to help your family manage times of difficulty or uncertainty and reclaim feelings of hope and control.
  • Versatile, expert care team. Our robust multispecialty team of pediatric mental health experts includes psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. Our team also includes Child Life and Creative Arts specialists, parent mentors, palliative care experts, and chaplains, as well as medical providers, such as cardiologists, critical care specialists, and cardiac neurodevelopmental specialists to ensure multilayered care for your child and your family throughout the care journey.
  • Ongoing care for all Heart Center patients and families. For us, emotional, social, and mental health care are not extras, they are a part of your child’s heart care and a vital standard of care for our Moore Children’s Heart Center patients and families. By working together as one, with you at the center, we strive to support you at every turn throughout your care journey.

Who benefits from Thrive Program support

  • Expecting parents who have received a prenatal diagnosis of heart disease from our Fetal Cardiology Program or another Stanford Medicine Children’s Health heart provider.
  • Infants, children, teens, and young adults with acute or chronic heart disease or pulmonary hypertension.
  • Moore Children’s Heart Center patients during hospitalization (inpatient) and after hospitalization (outpatient).
  • Parents and caregivers of children with congenital heart disease.

For more information, ask your Stanford Children's pediatric cardiologist about the Thrive Program.

Your child’s heart disease doesn’t just affect them, it affects the whole family. That’s why we offer emotional, social, and mental health support to our Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center patients and families. When you are able to cope with your emotions, your child will be better able to thrive. We encourage you to ask us for mental health support at any stage during your child’s care journey.

Through Thrive and our partnerships with other teams at Stanford Children’s and in the community, we provide the following services:

Mental health screening

We start with a mental health screening from your Stanford Children’s social worker or doctor to help us learn what level of support you and your family need. We then have a consultation with you to develop an all-around social/emotional or mental health plan tailored to you and/or your child’s needs and interests.

Psychotherapy sessions

Our Thrive psychologists are experts in supporting children, teens, and parents with heart disease. They offer science-backed psychotherapy for medical trauma, helping you cope with treatments and manage overwhelming feelings. Sessions are tailored to your needs. For parents and caregivers, therapy is based on our team’s research on trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, which has proven to significantly reduce symptoms of trauma, anxiety, and depression in parents.

Social work services

Thrive’s social workers provide personalized support and give you strategies to work through challenges that may occur during your child’s heart care journey. They also help with logistics, coordinate communication between you and your child’s medical team, and provide counseling.

Social work care: What to expect

  • Every child and family in Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center has access to a social worker who specializes in heart disease.
  • We strive to have the same social worker follow you throughout your child’s hospital journey, including prenatally, and we work closely with our outpatient social work team to ensure continuity of care.
  • If you are coming from out of state, your social worker can help with relocation and with the logistics of your stay once you arrive.
  • Your social worker often initiates your mental health care. They begin with a mental health screening to help assess your needs and are available to provide supportive counseling. If you need a higher level of care, they help coordinate assessments and therapy with the appropriate mental health specialist.
  • Your Stanford Children’s social worker helps to identify your family’s communication preferences and is available to help facilitate coordination of care with the multidisciplinary team.
  • Your social worker can also connect you with resources for financial, transportation, and housing needs during hospital stays. They are a constant touchstone for questions and a guide for your hospital stay and beyond.

Parenting support

We provide our inpatient Heart Link Parent Support Group for parents/caregivers in our Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit and our Acute Care Cardiology Unit. It is offered weekly in English and Spanish. If interested, ask your inpatient team or nurse for more information. We also connect parents with a parent mentor who has firsthand experience with having a child with complex congenital heart disease. Our parent mentor is available to share with you a parent’s perspective on struggles and triumphs and provide self-management suggestions for your child’s medical journey.

Neurodevelopmental care

Our care team collaborates with experts from our Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program, one of a few programs like it on the West Coast, which empowers children with complex congenital heart disease to stay on track with their physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Our care includes partnering with your child’s school to carry out a care plan.

Psychiatry care

When your child could benefit from medication treatments for mental health challenges, we can refer to and partner with the Stanford Children’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry team for their inpatient and outpatient visits.

Exercise program support

Exercise and an active lifestyle are closely tied to overall wellness. We partner with various Stanford Children’s exercise program teams to help children feel as good they possibly can. For example, we integrate our Thrive program support into cardiac rehabilitation, through the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Lab and the Young Hearts in Motion program. We partner with these teams to help children cope with the traumatic stress of having a congenital heart condition, face fears around exercising, and build self-esteem about their body and its abilities. Together, we empower them feel better and do better.

Palliative care

Our team’s palliative care clinician partners with patients and families who have serious, life-threatening heart conditions. In your meetings, you will receive support in making medical decisions and advance care planning. This care may be recommended for you if your child faces a complex heart surgery or heart transplant, or another critical (life-threatening) care procedure.

Ollie Hinkle Heart Foundation collaboration

To help extend mental health services to all of our Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center patients and families, we have partnered with the Ollie Hinkle Heart Foundation to supplement our care.

Additionally, your child with heart disease can benefit from our hospital wraparound services:

Child Life and Creative Arts

Stanford Children’s has an award-winning Child Life and Creative Arts team, whose members help children and families cope with the stress of hospitalization and disease, including heart disease. Their services include healing arts, creative arts therapy (e.g., art and music therapy), recreation therapy, and helping ease preparation for procedures and surgeries.

Chaplain support

Our care team can refer you to health care chaplains who are available for spiritual and religion-specific faith-based counsel.

For more information, ask your child’s heart doctor at Stanford Children's about the Thrive Program.

There is growing research on the association between heart disease and mental health conditions in both patients and parents. Our Thrive care team is helping to contribute to these research studies and is developing novel, research-based treatment approaches. Our recent studies include the following:

Our Thrive Program also promotes initiatives to ensure inclusion and health equity for our Heart Center patients and families.

Other important research on heart disease and mental health care

We recognize the groundbreaking research paper titled Psychological outcomes and interventions for individuals with congenital heart disease: A scientific statement from the American Heart Association as a guiding reason for why we have made mental health care a standard of care within our Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center. With Thrive, we are one of a handful of pediatric heart centers that are leading the nation in efforts to integrate mental health care within cardiology care.

For more information, ask your child’s pediatric cardiologist at Stanford Children's about the Thrive Program.