Question              Reply to this Comment

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Hi, this is more of a question instead of a comment. Your website says that this program is for children ages 13-17, but I have heard that some of the kids are not released until they are 18. Can you please tell me the correct information.

i can't believe it.              Reply to this Comment

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someone i know who goes there managed to send me an e-mail, and told me this place was terrible. they told me they treat you like crap, they eat mush, and that they are suing the hell out of that place as soon as they get out. they said they cry every night and would rather be in juvie instead. i don't understand how people get away with facilities like this especially with all the lawsuits that have been filed. plus, they don't let you talk to ANYONE besides your parents. no visitors, no letters, nothing. that isn't healthy to confine someone into a place like that when you're trying to get them to be a better person. it makes them go crazy. especially if they can only talk to their parents who forced them into a place like that anyway. i am pissed and i wish i could break into this hell hole and save them. DO NOT SEND YOUR KIDS THERE.

MWA              Reply to this Comment

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I was in MWA for 2 years. I graduated. And I can tell you from 2 years of experience that it is nothing like how you descibed Emily. And also there is no way a person in there was able to send you an email. Were only allowed contact with our parents. Also, MWA idea to help teens is a great way. Dont say it makes ppl go crazy because it doesn't. and youll never know or understand what a place like this is like untill you have been.

MWA ?              Reply to this Comment

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Hi, Samuel, I am currently looking into MWA for my 12 year old son, he has never been away from home and is going through a really rough time right now emotionally, & after reading Emily's post I'm afraid to look any further,but it seems he could really benefit from this also,if you could please give a little more insight. Thank You.

gdg              Reply to this Comment

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gg

Parents Please Listen              Reply to this Comment

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Please listen to me. I went to one of these when I was 14. I spent a year and a half there and I have never been the same since. It is now 6 years since I got out, and not a week goes by where some terrible thought bred from my time there comes cropping up. I understand that many parents are desperate, worried about the LIVES of their children even, but this is NOT the answer. I wont claim that NO-ONE finds it helpful, but by and large it simply increases the distrust, resentment, and fear between parents and their children. Creating deep issues that are extremely hard to get over even in the years that follow such an experience. These schools DO lie to the parents, they get away with it because many of the children sent there have lied to their parents and are therefore considered untrustworthy. Also, all mail is screened and children are made aware that mail with "negative comments" in it, will not be sent. My mother finally found this out much later when I was home again. I could go on and on as to the traumatic effects of sending your child to one of these programs. Being sent to these types of places and forced to handle incredible pain with no support and no one you can really talk to honestly (without being severely punished at least) creates an insecurity and deep-seated fear that can easily last well into adult-hood, if not a whole lifetime, causing an entirely new and considerably more dangerous set of behaviors to form. Parents I beg you, consider EVERY other possible option first.

you are being lied to              Reply to this Comment

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The Kids there are not treated unfairly ... they are fed well and the people there do care about them... It is a good place for the troubled to go to grow with others like them ... it is strict and if you don't understand that the kids will tell big fish stories about how bad they have it then you are I am sorry to say you are stupid.

Not that bad              Reply to this Comment

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I was a student at MWA and yes it sucked. We all hated it but it taught us a lot. I cried myself to sleep for days. I didnt know what to do with myself. but as time went by things got better. I was actually paying attention in class and meeting people that werent there to bring me down but to help me grow as a person. The enviornment sucks...but MWA teaches you that everything in life is a privledge. Not a right and if taken advantage of, there will be a consequence. It does not help everyone but for me it did. I actually graduated high school 6 months ahead of my class and have a good head on my shoulders. I have many good friends from MWA that I still talk to after being home for almost 2 years now.

I was there              Reply to this Comment

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Ashley, what age did you go there and how long were you there? Did you return to regular high school afterwards? What are you doing now? Also, Did you know anybody with bipolar disorder who went there and was successfully "graduated"?

Agreedd              Reply to this Comment

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Hello Emily. I attended MWA for 19 months, March 18, 2008 through October 2, 2009. The way your friend described MWA was accurate, though the impression he gave was, in my experience, a total understatement. For me, MWA was the eighth circle of hell. Multiple students who came to Midwest, who I know personally, came there from military academies. They wanted to go back. Though Midwest Academy is a boarding school, I never lived there. I merely existed. To call what I did at that place living would be on the same order as calling death by sleep deprivation merciful. The only reason why I did not commit suicide was because I did not have access to a means that would have been relatively painless. After leaving MWA when I was 18, I lived in the Quincy, IL Salvation Army homeless shelter until December 21, 2009 when my parents finally allowed me to come home. Being homeless was infinitely better, and healthier, than MWA. If you would like to hear more about my time at MWA, please look up Daniel Sebastian Maurer (me) on Facebook.

Midwest alumni              Reply to this Comment

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Where's your faculties qualifications, this is a WWASP school, WWASP is so horrificably abusive kids commit suicide in their programs and often upon having endured their abuse, most of them are suffering from PTSD, and recent survivors of Midwest say it was horrific just see the facebook stop wwasps site, this is a cult just see the videos of Greg Kutz, the Government of Accountibility's special investigation's forensic units manager vidoes on you tube about WWASPS if you want credibility. They just transfer staff around regardless if they've abused kids.

Crappy place to work, too              Reply to this Comment

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Although I never saw "abuse" when I worked there, I saw a lot of unfairness and power-tripping, and the whole vibe of the place is extremely negative. The assumption that is made--whether you are a student or a staff member--is that you are, down to the bottom of your soul, a bad person who is just itching to do bad things. Just as students are encouraged to accuse other students of misconduct (true or not), the staff "culture" is to try to get other staff in trouble. And this behavior is called "integrity." My "training" consisted of being shown how to clock in and out, having a skinny little employee handbook tossed at me, and being thrown into the classroom (where it was expected that the other teaching staff would show me how to operate the computer system and fill out the paperwork). Ultimately I got fired on the basis of a really twisted interpretation of a rule I was never trained about. (In reality, I got fired because my supervisor hated the fact that I knew she was incompetent, and also because I'm not the kind of sheeple who is going to put my head down and stay quiet when I see a problem.) I believe some students DO benefit from Midwest Academy. But one size does not fit all.