Philosophy of Program

Milwaukee Academy operates on the belief that despite a sometimes overwhelming environment or a difficult mental health diagnosis, people can learn to make safer and more healthy choices for themselves. Female adolescents have several influences in their lives, some good, some bad. Adolescents choose how they will react to those influences and which values and beliefs they will choose to make a part of their life. They can also learn to manage their mental health symptoms in a healthy manner.

Girls with emotional disturbances exhibit their behaviors in their families, schools, and communities. Some have broken the law, some have not. Some get caught, some do not. Their list of problems include: theft, pregnancy, lying, dangerous sexual activity, aggression, truancy, property destruction, anti-social self-esteem, victimization, self harming behaviors, and abuse of drugs or alcohol.

Behavior is the outcome of thinking. This program is designed to help adolescents replace unsafe and irrational thoughts with rational and responsible thinking. It is a comprehensive program which provides individual therapy, family counseling, drug and alcohol education, moral development, anger management, self-esteem development which addresses managing mental health symptoms along with controlling behaviors, ethics and values, relationship issues, and women's health issues.

What is the "Choice to Healthy Living" Program ?
The Healthy Living Program is a 22-bed female unit with intensive treatment that provides close supervision and structure to help the female adolescent begin to control her behavior. The focus on treatment is the empowerment of the adolescent to be able to manage difficult mental health symptoms and choose a safer method of expressing her needs and feelings. Once she is able to recognize that despite some things being beyond her control she can choose a positive way of interacting with others, she is then able to recognize the possibility of changing her current destructive ways of coping.

An individual treatment plan is developed with short and long term goals and objectives that are accomplished through a team approach. This program is intense and comprehensive. It is an opportunity for young women to change their lives for themselves and their families, foster dignity and self-respect and find strength for today and hope for tomorrow.