Are you seeking a transformative solution for your teen’s challenges? Turning Winds offers a long-term residential treatment center for teens that fills the gaps left by other treatment options. Our holistic and relational approach, guided by experts like our medical director, John Gordon, MD, and CEO Owen Baisden, ensures profound and lasting change for your teen.
“These days, most psychiatrists just do short-term hospitalization, usually about a week, which isn’t very much time to deal with anything but a crisis,” says Dr. Gordon. “And a lot of the kids here have been in other programs before that either were not long enough or there was too much resistance on the adolescent’s part to make it useful.”
In his book Not By Chance, teen therapy expert Tim Thayne emphasizes the importance of allowing enough time for change to occur. “There is another element to why good programs work and that is simply time,” Thayne wrote. “To create deep internal change, teens need to be immersed in a carefully crafted milieu, with positive values and solid principles, long enough for these changes to sink in.”
Our teenage clients frequently stay for up to a year at Turning Winds, which allows them to form relationships with people that would not have been possible for them otherwise. “Usually, it takes about five months before kids decide that they’re going to make use of the program,” says Dr. Gordon.
Turning Winds helps young people learn how to engage purposefully with the world around them. The program’s holistic approach, relational focus, and emphasis on achieving authentic openness make Turning Winds especially effective at facilitating positive outcomes and long-term change.
“The simple, singular focus of our treatment program is to help each student improve their self-image and their self-confidence and change the behaviors that have been hindering their growth by teaching them to create stable patterns of living through education, process groups, and individualized treatment planning,” says CEO Baisden.
PURPOSEFUL REMOVAL TO FACILITATE HEALING
Sometimes parents have concerns about sending their child to a remote treatment campus in a place such as Troy, Montana, far away from the family home. It’s important to take note that with Turning Winds the geographical location is part of the program.
Most of our teenage clients heal more thoroughly when removed from what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has criticized as a harmful “phone-based childhood” that is “making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood.”
A Gallup survey published in October 2023 showed that just over half of US teenagers report spending at least four hours per day using a variety of social media apps. “This use amounts to 4.8 hours per day for the average US teen across seven social media platforms tested in the survey.”
“Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board,” Dr. Haidt wrote in The Atlantic. “Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected.”
The impact of near-constant smartphone use is multi-dimensional. Three-quarters of US high school students do not get enough sleep, for instance. Sleep is linked to academic performance, including decision-making, problem-solving, and attention, impacting a teenager’s learning ability. Lack of sleep is linked to many mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
At Turning Winds, teenage clients get reacquainted with life without constant phone and internet use. It is a safe place for teens to unplug and heal. The program helps teens break free from unhealthy tech habits. Instead, they try new activities and develop the social skills that are often stunted by excessive screen time. They gain confidence and build authentic friendships that are missing in the digital world.
COMPREHENSIVE LASTING CHANGE
The Turning Winds program aims at effecting comprehensive change in our clients. We believe success is most likely achieved through a combination of therapeutic and educational approaches that provide the best outcomes possible for each child we treat.
These therapeutic approaches—many unique to our hybrid residential treatment program—include character and leadership development, health and wellness, experiential education, evidence-based clinical treatment, and academic engagement. Together, these focus areas constitute the Five Pillars that promote therapeutic change.
“This program works because we build relationships with these kids. The more of a relationship therapists have, the more of a positive impact they can have on these kids,” says Turning Winds therapist Sean Carlin.
We have blended the benefits of three approaches to creating a residential treatment center with a fully accredited academic program while leveraging recreational and out-of-the-box individual and group therapy to promote positive change. Our collaborative treatment approaches include character education, health, and wellness of the body and mind, outdoor therapeutic experiential education, and therapeutic and academic success, along with continuously improving each vital pillar of our world-class school through measuring outcomes in each area.
Our goal is to help teens develop the skills and confidence needed to live a productive and happy life. When they leave here, they leave with goals and aspirations they have set not for us, or their families but for themselves and we have given them the tools they need to succeed.
The relationships our staff builds with the kids allow them to feel cared for, both physically and mentally. We believe in a positive peer culture where growth is encouraged by everyone, not just staff.
Our mission is to rescue teens from crises, renew their belief in their potential, reunite them with their families, and put them on a sustainable path to success. Contact us online for more information, or call us at 800-845-1380. If your call isn’t answered personally, one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.
