Montana Academy is a therapeutic boarding school for troubled teenagers. At its founding in 1997 it was unique in the nation. For it combined well-trained clinicians, an effective therapeutic program and a challenging prep school–all situated on a remote Montana ranch. Soon the Academy fulfilled its promise to become a remarkable combination of clinical sophistication, staged incentives and ambitious academics. Montana Academy has been a pioneer, the first residential therapeutic school of its kind—a unique synthesis of demanding prep-school, open ranch, clinical and developmental program.
Given the Academy’s selection of students, it is rare that one narrow cluster of symptoms or one formal psychiatric “disorder” makes adequate sense of students’ many presenting problems. Medications usually have already been tried and have failed (alone) to remedy our students’ broadly-based troubles–at school, at home and socially. A global array of problems points to a deeper developmental source for surface symptoms, misbehaviors and repetitive failures.