Arkansas Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls

Our Therapeutic Focus

Researchers have found that gender-specific rehab is the most effective way to treat mental health and addiction issues. Evangelhouse Academy is only for girls grades 6-12. We also don’t accept girls with higher-level issues that would be disruptive to our program. This would include girls with severe drug addictions, psychosis, significant running away, or cruelty towards animals.

With our healthy peer culture focus, your daughter will learn to set boundaries with other girls. Because we are girls only, she will not have the distractions of boys and relationships around.  In our therapeutic milieu, she will learn to be assertive with her female peers in a safe environment.

Evangelhouse is organized around five areas of wellness in which students grow – Spiritual, Therapeutic, Academic, Social, and Physical. This structure provides a holistic perspective of a student’s level of functioning. Our professional services address the following symptoms and their underlying root causes in each area of wellness.

Quarterly, students participate in high-ropes confidence training and are taught to take on challenging tasks with the help of their peers. They are challenged to become aware of their communication habits and how to make meaningful contributions to others. Students’ unique leadership styles are identified and honed, as they learn to work cooperatively within a group.

At Evangelhouse Christian Academy, we believe that physical education for girls is an important part of the therapeutic process. By allowing students to express themselves through a variety of supervised outdoor activities, they will learn valuable leadership skills that will help guide them through life. 

If you have any questions about the program please call us at 1-800-924-4012 or visit our contact page.

We have enrolled girls from all over Arkansas including rural areas and larger cities like Little Rock, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, and Springdale. Our close proximity is ideal for visitation and family workshops, yet far enough that your daughter’s bad influences and negative peer group will stay far away.

A Unique School for Girls from Arkansas 

Evangelhouse Christian Academy offers a comprehensive, targeted, and family-focused program to help troubled girls and their families. Because each student and family is unique, we spend the first several weeks getting to know them and their requirements. Each individual and family therapy session is then tailored to their specific needs. We also emphasize group therapy sessions to promote key community concepts.

We are a Therapeutic Boarding School for girls from Arkansas and all over the US. We serve girls with depression, anxiety, problematic behavior, social issues, family discord, and more in grades 6-12 from across the US. We’ve enrolled girls from 5 countries! We are based in Louisiana.

At Evangelhouse, every individual therapy session, group therapy, and family therapy session is led by a certified therapist. Diversity of therapy settings allows our girls to work on problems like honesty, integrity, trust, responsibility and accountability. Students engage in a range of therapeutic activities to reinforce what they are learning. Our therapists use a variety of techniques to help clients evolve, including CBT, DBT, and Family Systems Theory.

Arkansas Behavioral Health Data

•   In Arkansas, 6.26% of teens in Arkansas have used drugs and 8.35% of teens in Arkansas have consumed alcohol.
•   6.23% of teens in Arkansas have used drugs and 8.53% of teens in Arkansas have consumed alcohol.
•   One out of five girls ages twelve to seventeen had experienced major depression within the last year.
•   8.9 percent of teens experiment with drugs every month.
•   16.4 percent of teens abuse alcohol
•   9.5 percent engage in binge drinking
•   7.7 percent of children between 4 and 17 are diagnosed with ADHD every year.
•   10.3% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 4.4 million) have diagnosed anxiety or depression. Diagnoses of depression and anxiety are more common with increased age.

You can find local Arkansas resources for your family here: https://humanservices.arkansas.gov/learn-about-programs/programs-for-mental-health-substance-abuse-issues/

• Get 24/7 Help for Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors
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• Learn how Peer Recovery Can Help You

Therapeutic Boarding School Defined

The definition of a therapeutic boarding school is, “A therapy-based program where school-aged children attend group and individual therapy sessions while keeping up with academic work as required by the Department of Education.” Therapeutic boarding schools (TBS) are residential schools designed to treat a host of issues including anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and more. The focus of therapeutic boarding schools is troubled teenagers. Teen girls are rehabilitated socially and academically in therapeutic boarding schools, heading off major issues before adulthood.

The admissions criteria of a Therapeutic Boarding School are generally stricter than in a Residential Treatment Center (RTC). That is because RTC’s usually take teens with more severe issues. RTC’s are better equipped to handle teens that are suicidal, need restraints, or intensive medical interventions.   

Many students at therapeutic boarding schools have unique challenges. Students are served alongside peers with similar emotional, social, or behavioral challenges. Therapeutic boarding schools like Evangelhouse Christian Academy help troubled teens grow into the young adult they strive to be. 

Evangelhouse Christian Academy is well known for its emphasis on therapy. We give our girls an opportunity to fully address their concerns and to help them discover a new way of life while renewing their relationship with God. 

While all of the girls have come to Evangelhouse Christian Academy to heal, their diagnoses may not necessarily be the same. Together, girls form social bonds based on common recovery goals. In what we call a “positive peer culture” students at Evangelhouse learn to interact in a positive way. Discussion of inappropriate topics, or discussing something harmful in a positive way, is highly discouraged by the group. 

Evangelhouse Christian Academy’s therapeutically diversified setting treats a wide spectrum of issues. Due to our therapeutic setting and focus on positive peer culture, your daughter will be able to let go of her unhealthy identification in this atmosphere and instead identify with others and herself based on her talents. Qualified staff such as licensed therapists will help your daughter identify the root of her issues.

Teens and Stress

Teenagers in the modern era face difficulties that their grandparents could have never imagined. Electronic media had compounded many of the “typical teen” conflicts that parents and teens normally encounter. Other issues, like issues with authority and control, are as old as time.

At Evangelhouse Christian Academy, we approach treatment knowing that teens’ interactions with their classmates and romantic interests have changed. Many of the issues we see from anxiety to acting out are rooted in screens or as a result of the widespread use of digital communication. 

During treatment, we seek to address a student’s potential lack of crucial interpersonal communication skills such as the ability to recognize social cues. Social skill is a common topic in our therapeutic environment. A lot of the anxiety and stress our students face over socialization can be traced back to excessive use of technology. 

At Evangelhouse Christian Academy, girls learn how to interact without the use of screens. We teach our girls how to manage their social media and texting habits. In insight-oriented therapy, they learn how they consume media, and how media can influence how they communicate, date, learn, sleep, and more.

Our girls focus on the present because they don’t have constant access to the internet. With an absence of digital distractions, girls at Evangelhouse Christian Academy face the issues that led them to our therapeutic community. 

To help combat these stressors, our therapists use:

— Group therapy sessions to develop insight into what is causing stress and to teach techniques to reduce stress. Group therapy sessions are led by a qualified treatment professional. 

— CBT- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT sessions are led by a licensed therapist.

— DBT- Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT sessions are led by a licensed therapist.

— Homework assignments to support therapy outside of sessions

— Family therapy to prepare the student for a successful transition back to the home environment.