Will's Choice

by Gail Griffith

  Finally we got a break: there was an unexpected opening at Montana Academy, a therapeutic boarding school for teens forty miles west of Kalispell, Montana, at the foot of Glacier National Park. The program came highly recommended by Susan Dranitzke. In fact, after we had pored over the literature on therapeutic high schools, Montana Academy was at the top of our list but initially we were told that no space was available until August.

  Lucky for us, the parents of a child who had been admitted two weeks before changed their mind about enrolling their son and we were moved to the top of the waiting list. Susan faxed Will’s particulars to Montana, and after a telephone conversation with the school’s admissions director, Rosemary McKinnon, Bob and I hastily arranged to fly to the school to meet with the staff.

  Educational consultant Susan Dranitzke’s client evaluation for residential treatment placement.

  I met with Will’s mother and stepfather and father and stepmother on March 28th 2001. They consulted with me because their son, Will D., was soon to be released from the Psychiatric Institute of Washington where he was hospitalized after attempted suicide. I was very impressed with the four caring adults because they clearly had Will’s best interests at heart. The hostility or tension, which frequently characterizes divorced and remarried families was totally absent. Clearly this is a large extended family that is able to function smoothly. There was total agreement that Will should be placed in a therapeutic boarding school even though he did not want to go away. All the parents have been quite active in Will’s life and all were unanimous in their praise, appreciation, and love for him. They told me that he is “a good student with a high IQ, a wonderful person who gets along with a diverse group of adults and young people, is well-liked by all, and has no enemies.” Will does not have behavior problems or substance abuse issues. He suffers from clinical depression and currently has the diagnosis of major depression from which he has suffered for several months. Several family members have also been depressed: Will’s mother and his paternal aunt.

  Will has had many school changes. He attended Holy Trinity in Washington DC from Kindergarten through 6th grade. He then moved to Palo Alto and went to Jordan Middle School in the fall of 1996 for 7th grade. Then Will’s father (the editor-in-chief of a publishing company) and stepmother (an internet editor for a dot.com) moved to San Francisco and Will attended St. Philip’s Middle School, a Catholic middle school. For High School, Will went to Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep for 9th and 10th grades, but he began asking to return to Washington DC in the 9th grade. He did return in the summer of 2000 and attended Gonzaga College High School for the first semester of 11th grade.

  Will was diagnosed with clinical depression on December 11th 2000 and though his grades were good, the struggle to stay in school was too much for him and he dropped out after the first semester. The Gonzaga guidance counselor, Bill Wilson told me that “the train just kept coming down the track,” meaning that the academic work load was continuous and that Will, though quite bright, could not handle the pressure while suffering from depression. Bill Wilson said that Will is a wonderful young man, who is very bright. Will was able to score well on the PSAT even when quite depressed. These scores would translate to mid 1300s for SAT’s.

  Will was hospitalized briefly in early January for depression and medication adjustment at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. Then he began to work for his mother who is a director at an international humanitarian foundation, which won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping victims of landmines. Will volunteered to pay rent to his mother and stepfather. It was his intention to get a GED and go to work. Will was working and going to therapy. Then, without warning, he took an overdose of his anti depressant, Remeron. He ingested 25, 15 milligram tablets and 25, 30 milligram tablets on Sunday, March 11th. The whole family was at home at the time, including Will’s stepsister Jane, a sophomore at the College of Charleston and Will’s stepbrother and best friend since kindergarten, John. Will claimed that he was feeling great one minute and then a black wave of despair enveloped him.

  Dr. Alen Salerian, Will’s psychiatrist, feels that Will’s depression is 70% biochemical and 30% therapeutic. Will is currently taking 60 milligrams of Prozac, 36 milligrams of Concerta, and 45 milligrams of Remeron and a small amount of Lithium.

  Will’s strengths include writing (see sample done in my office). He is very bright in all areas. He has a good sense of humor, is easy to be with, well liked by all and has never acted out. He has worked with his stepfather (an architect), at volunteer jobs including Food and Friends (an AIDs soup kitchen) and Habitat for Humanity. His weaknesses include his depression and his sensitivity to change and new situations.

  When I met with Will, the first thing he told me was that he is very stubborn. He does not want to go away to school. The family told me that Will is non-committal and that it is difficult for him to say what he likes or not likes.

  Will is a bright, kind and sensitive young man, who would like to be independent, but is in need of medical and therapeutic intervention for his depression. He also needs a challenging college preparatory academic program within a nurturing and intellectually stimulating environment.

  Signed and dated:

  April 4, 2001

  Flying from opposite ends of the country, Bob and I met at the airport in Salt Lake City late Sunday night, April 23. With some unease, I left Will for the first time since his suicide attempt to visit Montana Academy, knowing that the burden to keep him safe shifted solely to Jack. But I figured Will’s close and loving relationship with Jack would squelch any temptation on Will’s part to give in to a suicidal mood while I was gone. And Jack was more than capable of holding down the fort.

  Bob’s connection was running late, but so was the Delta Airlines flight departing for Glacier International Airport in Kalispell. He appeared at the departure gate within minutes of takeoff, and at 11:45 PM, we were on our way on the two-hour flight to the northwestern corner of Montana.

  There are few things as worthwhile as having a comfortable relationship with your former spouse. Despite having gone our separate ways, we were united in our love for the boys—and our turmoil over Will. Bob is patient, whereas I am impulsive; he is insightful in ways I am not. When we were together, he was always a sure-footed traveling companion, and was no less so under these circumstances. As we flew north to a place I had never heard of until a month before, to an unseen destination that held captive my hopes and fears, I drew comfort from Bob’s steadfastness, knowing we were partners in this crucial endeavor.

  We arrived at Glacier International Airport—a surprisingly contemporary structure with a distinctive Native American motif on display as wall art and in the gift shop—at 1:30 AM, amidst crowds of spring skiers and vacationers. What a surprise. Even at the late hour the place was bustling as drivers picked up prearranged tour groups and families greeted relatives.

  Bob and I staggered out into the frigid night air to locate our rental car and began the half-hour drive to Marion. Bob drove while I squinted at the pitch-black landscape to try to get a handle on the area. There appeared to be less snow on the ground than I’d anticipated, and indeed, we were told the next day that Montana was experiencing an unusually mild winter. Trees were still bare, and wasted patches of snow mixed with mud and soot piled up on the roadside.

  As we pulled into the town of Kalispell, searching for the Hampton Inn recommended because of the discount the hotel offered Montana Academy parents—even prospective parents—we were astonished to pass a brightly lit diner. It was still open for business, judging by the parking lot full of pickups and SUVs. This was too good to believe. Neither of us had eaten dinner.

  We careened into Finnegan’s of Kalispell, slid into a booth with red leatherette cushions, and ordered tuna melts and apple pie à la mode at 2:30 AM. I was stunned, and Bob and I saluted our good fortune at finding dinner and a great piece of pie just when and where we least expected it. Clearly, Finnegan’s was the place to be when th
e bars closed for the night. Even predawn on this Monday morning, Finnegan’s was packed. So far, everything about our expedition was a surprise. Maybe it was a good omen.

  After a scant four hours of sleep, several cups of strong coffee, and directions in hand, we ventured out early to find Montana Academy and the aptly named Lost Horizon Ranch. We headed west on Highway 2 toward the town of Marion, roughly thirty-five miles from downtown Kalispell. From the highway, the town of Marion appeared to consist of nothing more than a post office, a gas station, and a convenience store, and as we continued to climb an easy grade, the landscape became rockier and more rugged. There was evidence of fresh timber logging and occasional swaths of burned-out evergreen trees, suggesting a recent forest fire.

  “Jeez,” I remarked to Bob as we passed through what seemed to me a blighted landscape, “this is remote. If we get to the end of the road and it winds up looking like the Unabomber’s cabin, can we just turn around and go home?”

  Bob conceded it didn’t look exactly the way he had imagined it either, but we were used to warmer climates and spring doesn’t arrive in the Rockies until nature has squeezed every last ounce of fortitude from its inhabitants. It was only April.

  We passed a frigid-looking McGregor Lake and made an immediate turn northward and up a long and winding dirt road, which eventually gave way to a view of a tiny valley on the downhill side of a ridge. We could make out a couple of large, barn-like structures in the distance.

  I felt like a New Age pioneer woman, anticipating the unknown with a mixture of excitement and wariness, trying to read the smoke signals on the horizon. We turned left onto a private dirt road and were greeted by a large hanging wooden sign atop a wooden gate announcing MONTANA ACADEMY. We had arrived at Lost Horizon Ranch.

  “Don’t you figure every kid who passes under that sign reads it as ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter…’?” I wondered aloud.

  The name of the ranch must have predated Montana Academy, otherwise its founders would have taken pains to inspire a more optimistic first impression with a name of their own choosing, like “Happy Dude Farm” or “Living Large Refuge.”

  As we approached a cluster of wooden structures—a couple of rough-hewn log bunkhouses, a reconverted barn, and a newer log cabin with a large front porch—I swiveled in my seat to peer at the animals grazing in the large pen to our left.

  “What exactly do you suppose those are?” I asked Bob. I remember the moose at the National Zoo and I retained a clear picture of what they looked like from Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, but these peculiar animals lacked most of the requisite moose-like features. Whatever they were, they looked like a cross between a reindeer and a donkey, with spindly ocean coral for antlers.

  We got out of the car and sniffed the air. Sunny and crisp. I wanted to take it all in so I could replay the details later in the day and paint a picture for Will, should it come to that. We made our way to the first outcropping of wooden buildings in search of the administrative office and the admissions director, Rosemary McKinnon, who had arranged our 10:00 AM appointment. I expected to see more activity, more students; we only came across a couple of boys sitting on the deck outside the kitchen door of the Admin Building, bantering and lounging in the weak sunlight; another kid shoveled gravel to make a new pathway to the log cabin dormitory some fifty yards away.

  Students at Montana Academy were on “block break,” a hiatus between the program’s eight-week sessions. “Challenge week” followed the spring block and most of the students were off campus, engaged in organized camping trips in the Rockies or on bike trips to Moab, Utah. Those who had been in the program long enough to merit a return visit home were out of state for the week; others were spending a long weekend with families who had come to Montana to see their children. Too bad, we would not be able to sit in on classes in session or see students interacting.

  Rosemary greeted us in the school’s small industrial kitchen and led us to a basement conference room, where another of Montana Academy’s founders, Dr. John Santa, joined her. John, a clinical psychologist specializing in child psychology and neuropsychology, along with Rosemary, a licensed child therapist with a master’s degree in social work, generated a steady energy of empathetic understanding, likely acquired after umpteen interviews such as ours, with over-wrought and bewildered parents of troubled teens.

  Ten minutes into the conversation, I found myself stifling an urge to climb into Rosemary’s lap and pour out my heart to her. She had a lovely, soothing manner of speaking; a lilting British accent retained from her childhood softened and lengthened all of her vowels. I expected her to say, “Oooh, you poooor dear.” But she wasn’t given either to condescension or exaggeration, and she and John Santa made it clear from the start that nothing about our recitation was unique. They had seen and heard it all. In fact, they could recite from an invisible checklist the inventory of measures taken, frantic interventions, dashed hopes, altered plans, families ripped to shreds, and so on.

  As I listened to Bob recount Will’s history and our unhappy dilemma, and as Rosemary and John posed their patient and insightful questions to us, I felt stirrings of hope: something might actually work out for us here. This might be the place. Could it be? Would they really take him? What about the severity of his suicide attempt? It was recent enough to be problematic in everyone’s mind. Were they confident they could provide a safe-enough environment? An effective therapeutic program? Some measure of academic stimulation? Were they willing to take a chance?

  My desperation node was operating in overdrive. “I’ll bet they can smell my anxiety. Try hard not to appear unhinged,” I thought. I checked myself, looked down at my hands, and resumed picking at my bloodied cuticles. “Please,” I pleaded silently, “please agree to admit him.”

  Rosemary and her husband, Dr. John McKinnon, met while he was in graduate school at Cambridge, in the U.K., where he received a degree in economics prior to attending medical school. Dr. McKinnon was a well-regarded, iconoclastic psychiatrist with a specialty in adolescent psychiatry and with a penchant for literature and writing. In 1997 he and Rosemary teamed up with John Santa and his wife, Carol, a Ph.D. in educational psychology, after the Santas themselves spent years searching for an appropriate therapeutic setting for their troubled teenage son. Outraged by the draconian measures imposed by managed care upon doctors and therapists, the McKinnons and the Santas decided to reevaluate their careers and their lives.

  Yale-trained McKinnon had practiced in a number of psychiatric hospitals for young people over the years, and in a 1999 article in Education Week, he summed up his concerns about where the practice of adolescent and child psychiatry was headed, railing at the constraints managed care and other restrictions imposed. He wrote:

  It was clear [to me] that it would be very hard to find an effective and dignified place to practice medicine. I decided the next place I was going to practice, I was going to decide the right treatment for a patient.1

  The McKinnons and the Santas mortgaged their homes and took out a six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan to purchase the Montana property on which they quickly established a brand-new therapeutic boarding school aimed at providing an emotional growth curriculum with a strong academic component.

  Montana Academy’s mission statement outlines its approach to treatment:

  We seek to formulate a clear, clinical understanding of each child’s developmental difficulties and to permeate our program with the appropriate responses to promote growth. Our common goal is a sustained momentum in all aspects of a child’s development.2

  They describe their two-pronged approach to learning as an “emotional growth curriculum” for kids with psychological problems. The curriculum is “grounded in practical tasks and suited to students disenchanted and disengaged from conventional classrooms.”

  The program “challenges students to reflect upon their personal histories” and encourages them to “make sense of parents and families.” The academic program teaches
students “the study skills they need to enhance learning and explore issues of personal growth.” The work/study and wilderness elements of the program are designed to “link the learning process with academic content in valued community work and challenging outdoor adventure in the awesome beauty of Montana.”3

  This was awesome—and it was exactly the kind of program we wanted for Will.

  I cannot overstate my conviction that the single most important attribute of a quality program for troubled children is its leadership and its staff. Always, always investigate the credentials and skills of the doctors, therapists, teachers, and counselors affiliated with the program. “Experiential” learning does not mean “experimental” learning; and “emotional growth curriculum” should never, ever entail foisting a child into the wilderness to fend for himself or herself. Trusting untried educational theories promoted by persons with little or no track record in educational development or credentials in therapeutic treatment is as sensible as confining a child to a desert island until he or she grows up.

  Likewise, “tough love” or “boot camp” for teens must be weighed in the context of a rigorous therapeutic approach, overseen by skilled clinicians. A lot of people assume that because they are “big hearted” or because they “understand teenagers,” they are well suited to run therapeutic programs. Not so. Unfortunately, licensing standards are not uniform and a number of programs operate with no accreditation.

  The Internet is an invaluable tool. As a rule of thumb, you can expect a listing categorized as a “dot.com” (as opposed to “dot.org”) to steer you to a Web site advertising the services of a for-profit business. Some are shams, and some are very effective at helping families, but it’s a crapshoot. You can hire an educational consultant to help you, but if your resources are stretched, my advice is to seek out other families who have availed themselves of treatment facilities for their kids. Talk to the parents and, if possible, to the teens themselves about their experiences. The epidemic of kids in trouble doesn’t bypass small towns or rural communities; it is not just something happening in the suburbs or the bigger cities. There is bound to be a family in your community who has been down this road and who can offer some guidance.