Hello Friends of Mountain Youth Academy,

What is unique about Mountain Youth Academy, is that we allow for youth to be transitioned from the community to keep the child safe while they begin the process of addressing their trauma history. Many programs are geared toward placing at-risk youth from the community in order to keep the community safe but our students are those that are vulnerable in the communities. We focus on the trauma that the youth has encountered and how it is affecting their life. This is to say that we work more on addressing what the youth has experienced rather than what they have done. We use an array of services on this journey with them while continuing to support them in their recovery.

Mental health treatment has been subject of great misunderstanding, stigma and parity concerns since its inception. We all recognize that in no reality would a healthy person with a broken bone hope to be prescribed pain medication indefinitely without ever repairing or treating the actual injury yet our society often addresses mental health as only focusing on the symptoms and not the injury. We believe that this is rarely if ever the solution for the youth that we encounter. We are mindful that when students are admitted that they often arrive on numerous medications and to some degree their symptoms are being suppressed rather than resolved. We work to reduce or eliminate these in order to better understand not only the symptoms but also the baselines of the person that they were prior to the trauma, who they currently are and who they want to become.

We recognize and celebrate the resiliency of youth and base their recovery on this strength. As we learn more about the brain we understand the effect of trauma and how to appropriately work to address this injury rather than just the symptoms. We work to heal the brain and address the emotion in order to see more successful individualized goal achievement. This helps the children find their way back to who they want to be rather than proceeding with the injury in an induced “fogged” state that allows them not to experience the trauma as much. The reality is that trauma can be recovered from and that you can find the person that once was lost to trauma. It is a difficult process but the result is undeniable.

We are grateful for the trust that is given to us to treat those in our care and take great comfort in knowing that together we can make a difference for the child, the family, the community, the payer and our other stakeholders.

Best Regards,

Eric Dunkerly, CEO/Managing Director, Mountain Youth Academy