October of 2008 culminated what was to be the solidifying of my family estrangement. Previous to going to Midwest Academy, I was experiencing behavioral and mood disturbances (sneaking out, arguments, depression, a previous suicide attempt a year previous) which were not adequately dealt with by a psychiatrist. Now a confirmed suffered of Bipolar I disorder with severe psychotic symptoms, I believe these events to be both the beginnings of my disorder combined with sexual and religious identity conflicts with my family.
My family was devotedly religious, condemned evolution, and openly despised “the gays.” I suppose my potentially just unfolding disorder combined with this deep conflict with my family is what turned a previously star student into a depressed, angry, and withdrawn teen. As an intelligent student, I secured a presidential scholarship to Illinois State University, but would later be forced to sign away the scholarship, or suffer for three months in a small, concrete room. My family could never accept that I simply could not believe in god based on my scientific understandings. They further could not understand that my homosexuality was unrelated to my views on god. They felt as if my atheism was “because” of my gayness, and that I was “acting out.”
I willfully went to Midwest Academy the first time. After six months, I was released for a month before again returning. I did not return willfully the second time. When I was preparing for the first time, I was under the impression that this would be a safe, friendly environment where I could get away from my volatile family environment . I was under the impression that I would be seeing a psychiatrist and a counselor regularly to help with my obvious psychiatric issues. I thought it was a good place, a special place for “troubled teens.” I thought I would be able to work on school and my mood issues, but what was to come has forever changed me, and not for the better. My ability to have scraped some small thing out of what remains of my life and call it “good” was MY ability alone. Midwest Academy only made it harder for me to reach my goal of wholeness and happiness.
Midwest Academy, most frankly put, is a hell hole. How are students supposed to work on interpersonal skills if they are banned from talking to each other almost completely? How can you work on family issues when you are so restricted from talking to family? When your communications are constantly monitored? How can it be a good thing that the students cannot access the police when they feel like they are being abused? How can it be a good thing that there are unqualified staff working with kids with psychiatric or behavioral issues? How can it be a good thing, for instance, when you are explicitly denied access to a psychiatrist, like I was? How can it be a good thing to wait for mental illness to get worse and then throw your teen onto the streets without any skills whatsoever?
Midwest Academy claims to be about learning how to follow rules and discipline kids, but ultimately, those techniques do not work. Teens like this need licensed professionals and an environment in which they can be both comfortable AND growing emotionally. It can be done.
I felt I was psychologically abused on many occasions in Midwest Academy and I also felt like I was consistently not fed enough, especially when in “Out of School Suspension” aka a small concrete room. The entire structure of the program simply punishes people not following the rules, and that kind of brute conditioning is shown to not work effectively on humans. Because of the pressure of being in that environment, I began screaming in my sleep. One night at the academy, I literally woke nearly fifty other students with my screaming. I continued screaming in my sleep for approximately a year or so after leaving the academy. I believe myself to have had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for a year after the academy, especially when I would feel panicked and frantically call a friend to make sure that I wasn’t in the program anymore. The nightmares were awful. I would wake up screaming, frantically trying to make sense of where I was and if I was safe. I feel like that kind of lasting psychological release is indicative of the amount of psychological pressure being put on teens in this academy.
Furthermore, the food was always inadequate. Even when you became “level 2” and were able to get additional food, I do not believe I was able to breach 155 lbs. However, the inability to maintain much weight could also have had something to do with the grueling, repetitive, militant, and dominating work-outs we were required to do. It was almost as if “gym time” was just another way for the staff to “poke the bears,” except unlike bears, many students simply just internalized this poisonous abuse.
I am sure that if I were literary enough, I could extrapolate every detail of that experience in Midwest Academy, but I’m not sure that even then I would have done it as much justice as undergoing the suffering once again. If I were to have been there knowing what I know now, I probably would not have stopped at killing multiple staff members to obtain my freedom from such horrible people; however, my only intent now in life is to regain my peace and personal identity, two things that are actually going quite swimmingly now due to my own, and only my own, hard work. I only hope that some day these people can either be sued into misery or prosecuted criminally.