MTC Youth Ranch Therapeutic Approach

We at MTCYR strive to cultivate the individual talents and interests of the “at-risk” youths who are enrolled in our “Long-Term Residency Program (6-18 months). We have found that 18 months is the amount of time to be the most successful in transforming the negative behavior of the adolescent. Our long term residential program combines the effectiveness of a individualized academic curriculum, vocational training (Vo-Tech), and Equine therapy. At Mount Carmel, the key to our success is the therapeutic effects of the ranch environment, personal relationships developed between each young man and the staff and professional counseling. The lessons learned from these realities foster a change of direction from a hedonistic culture of death to a Christian-coboy influenced culture of honesty, responsibility, and determination. We customize both a therapeutic program and an academic curriculum based on the particular needs of each student, allowing our experienced staff of teachers, mentors and counselors to devote the necessary individualized care and attention to your child.

Mount Carmel Youth Ranch’s “Individual Treatment Plan”

The task of motivating the “unmotivated” is taxing and has required MTCYR to develop a unique “Individual Treatment Plan” that focuses on the interest and needs of your child. When a boy first arrives, we immediately begin to dialogue with the boy to gain an understanding of his psychological condition, intellectual ability, and academic interests. When a student, for example, informs us that his favorite subject in school is history, we design a program that combines the experiential with the academic: we might have the boy read about the Nez Peirce tribe and then take him, by horse, along the trail Chief Joseph used to evade the U.S. Calvary; or have him read about the massive migrations of different ethnic cultures during World War II and take him to the Japanese Internment Camp on Heart Mountain. A student that is interested in math will be asked to calculate the amount of concrete needed for a construction project in which he will participate, or to figure out the hypotenuse of a right triangle as he is laying the foundation of a new building.

When a boy who is accustomed to repeated failures succeeds in an area of his interest, the gratification from this achievement often transfers over into the next subject, thus marking the end of a repetitive string of failures and the beginning of a new string of successes.