Christian Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls from Maine

We are a Christian Therapeutic Boarding School for girls from Maine. Located in Louisana, we serve girls from Maine and across the US. The Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school was established in 1995 to serve Christian families with a quality residential treatment option for troubled teen girls.  In its quest to do so, Evangelhouse pioneered a treatment model that blends licensed behavioral healthcare with the structure of a traditional Christian boarding school.  Since then, it has evolved to become the premier non-denominational Christian option in the marketplace of high-quality teen residential treatment centers.

At Evangelhouse, we get so many girls from Maine that we created this page for Maine families looking for a Christian all-girls boarding school. Girls in large cities like Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor face unique mental health challenges.

Therapeutic Boarding Schools Defined

Therapeutic boarding schools such as Evangelhouse Christian Academy are designed to deal with specific behavioral health issues. We exclusively serve girls in grades 6 through 12 that have mood disorders, ADHD, depression, family discord, defiance, anger, and more.  Girls come to Evangelhouse Christian Academy for approximately a school year or longer. 

Evangelhouse Christian Academy is unique in that we don’t take teens with higher-level needs that require more intensive treatment. Parents are often glad to hear this and that their daughter will not be exposed to higher-level issues that they might experience at a residential treatment center or other locked facility. 

In therapeutic boarding schools like Evangelhouse Christian Academy, academics are administered through qualified teachers and the Louisana Department of Education. We must adhere to strict standards for quality education in order to maintain our accreditation.

Therapeutic boarding schools are not intensive in inpatient psychiatric hospitals. They are more akin to group homes or home-based residential programs. Because students are not physically locked-in like in residential treatment centers, we can enjoy a host of activities like horseback riding, bike riding, soccer, volleyball, community service project, and outings.

As opposed to residential treatment centers com treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools have a stronger academic focus as the student is generally college-bound. Because of this, we put special focus on ensuring our girls are ready to face the challenges of independence in addition to preparing them for a successful transition home. 

Christian boarding schools for teen girls, such as Evangelhouse, provide a number of advantages. Our girls receive the individual attention they require to avoid falling behind academically from teachers that are academically qualified and also understand the mental health issues the students are enrolled for. Girls acquire resilience and self-reliance at Evangelhouse. Girls who attend have a better chance of developing skills to ensure they are successful in college and beyond.

Maine Stats on Girls that Need Therapeutic Schools

•   A new study is putting Maine at the top of the list when it comes to the number of children with mental health disorders. This revealing report was just published in a leading medical journal.
•   That study in JAMA Pediatrics finds about 1 in 4 children in Maine has at least one mental health disorder, like depression, anxiety, or ADHD. That’s higher than the national prevalence of about 1 in 6.
•   In Maine, approximately 50% of girls age 14 and older with a mental illness drop out of high school
•   One out of five girls ages twelve to seventeen had experienced major depression within the last year.
•   8.9 percent of teen girls experiment with drugs every month.
•   16.4 percent of teen girls abuse alcohol
•   9.5 percent of teen girls engage in binge drinking

You can find resources on mental health resources in Maine here: https://211maine.org/mental-health/

OUR THERAPEUTIC BOARDING SCHOOL COMPONENTS:

Therapeutic Academy for Maine Girls

The unique setting at Evangelhouse provides a safe community that we believe allows our students to grow and study. In our community, we eliminate many of the outside world’s stressors that can hinder our residents from performing well academically and feeling well emotionally. Many of the stressors in our outside world may create overwhelming situations for our teens that are difficult to cope with. In the interest of fostering beneficial change in our teenage girls, we help them to develop coping strategies. 

Milieu Therapy at Evangelhouse

The main goal of Milieu treatment programming is to eliminate the stressors that can trigger negative emotions from our teenage residents. In turn, when we achieve de-risking of our residents, we produce a therapeutic setting.  Under the protection of a controlled therapeutic setting, our residents are able to develop new coping mechanisms. These new coping mechanisms become their personal set of tools to better cope with and understand the world. As our residents become more familiar with the routine at Evangelhouse, their ability to feel safe increases. Likewise, in a mutually safe environment, the peer group is able to build trust and make great progress in promoting emotional growth within each individual.

There are many advantages to participating in Milieu therapy. One advantage is that our teenagers learn to accept responsibility for their own actions. Another advantage is that they learn how to open up and disclose their difficulties. Our peer group receives regular feedback during therapy and this allows our residents to observe how their actions affect the community. This therapy setting offers them time to process and reflect on the consequences of the actions or decisions they have made in the past and how they can improve moving forward. 

At Evangelhouse, our residents will participate in milieu therapy and gain coping skills that will help them in the real world.

Therapeutic Academy for Girls

Today’s teen girl has so many more potential dangers than any proceeding generation. Just consider that eating issues, self-esteem issues, and identity issues usually begin soon before or during puberty.  Eating disorders like binge eating, bulimia, or anorexia can have a negative impact on a teen girl’s family relationships, her physical health, her outlook, attitude, and her relationship with God. 

Women are more likely than men to suffer from eating disorders. Add to this problem the invention of Instagram, Tik Tok, and other social media platforms and you have a recipe for disaster in today’s teenage girl.

At Evanglehouse Christian Academy, we see a lot of teen girls who are trying to find their place in society and want to be recognized and appreciated for who they are. Many of the young ladies we work with at Evangelhouse are dealing with anxiety and insecurity, and the root cause can be often traced back to a social media app. Often, it’s the student’s peers at their school who are causing the trouble. We address comparing ourselves to others in group therapy, and why the image you see on Instagram might not be an accurate portrayal of that person’s life.

We understand that many girls may experience emotions of loneliness and even as far as depression as a result of not fitting in, whether that is real or imagined. Add to that, consider all of the negativity today’s teen girl finds online. Violent video games, sexualized content, bullying, hate speech, and more are readily available online. Add to this the constant comparison and competition for “likes” and followers their peers in the high school compete for. It’s no wonder so many girls report feeling depressed.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms can be fantastic methods for kids to engage with the world when used appropriately. On the other side, they can be quite dangerous and harmful to self-esteem and more when misused.  Our staff oversees and influences the culture of positive-peer influence at Evangelhouse. In this way, we seek to guide our students towards a more mature and responsible way of interacting and facing the dangers in today’s world.

Girls Christian Therapeutic School

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 positive 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.