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Tianna Dougher
Professor Courtney
Report
30 September 2015
The Utah Youth Village
Something that has always sparked my interest, are the battles that each young child/teen
deal with on a daily basis. Coming from a family with a few broken ties, I realized early on in
my life that you really have no idea the trials that people face behind scenes. I also fully
understand that many children have it immensely worse than I did, which is why I found interest
in the organization called The Utah Youth Village. This program has been developing in the
community to help our youth.
The Utah Youth Village changes the lives of troubled children. Some have been abused
or neglected. Others suffer from mental and emotional issues. All are lost and need super-parents.
Utah Youth Village program has teamed up with some other incredible programs such as
Families First, Alpine Academy, as well as smarter parenting and online parenting classes. All of
these great resources are to help the parents, help the child (Village Home Page.)
Families first is an organization that provides a way to get help for the child, without
removing the child from their own home. It supplies a specialist to come into their home and
teach the childrens parents structural methods on how to change a child's behavior over a 6 week
period. This goal is reached by using positive reinforcement, modeling, role playing, and other
methods that are designed specifically to teach long lasting, parenting and communication skills.

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Alpine Academy is a program designed for teenage girls from the ages of 12-18. These
girls suffer from depression, low self-esteem or high anxiety. The three words the academy uses
to describe their organization are: innovative, nurturing and therapeutic. This school, is beyond a
school. The girls live in their regular homes, but spend their entire days at the Alpine Academy.
Its purpose is to replicate their regular at home activities as much as possible. It offers many
things such as horse-back riding, sports to participate in, painting, ballet, school classes, and
individual therapists to help guide them along the way of the things that they are not only
learning academically, but learning about themselves as well.
The last thing that the Utah Youth Village offers is online parenting classes. These classes
take you through step by step and focus on things such as punishment vs. teaching, observing
and describing behavior, positive and negative consequences, setting goals, problem solving and
much more. They have also teamed up with Smarter Parenting which is an online course of
videos made by parents who used the same type of methods in their own homes.
This plays a big role into how children start this kind of unacceptable behavior to begin
with. In an article titled Positive parenting with child, it reads Parenting is a major influence on
childrens developing socially appropriate and competent behavior. Indeed, a number of studies
have documented links between parenting variables, including behavior (Danzi, Allison P.) The
parenting classes that Smarter Parenting offers, are to help prevent this unacceptable behavior
from occurring before it even starts. This is grasped by teaching parents the proper way to handle
their children in different situations, teaching good life skills. As you can see, the Utah Youth
Village has partnered up with some other great organizations that also help with troubled
children. Some may ask, well how many children actually deal with these kinds of things? Four
million children and adolescents in this country suffer from a serious mental disorder that causes

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significant functional impairments at home, at school and with peers. Of children ages 9 to 17,
21 percent have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that causes at least minimal
impairment (Unknown). Some of these mental disorders include: depression, anxiety, social
anxiety, bipolar, eating disorders,
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome,) ADD (Attention Deficit
Disorder,) OCD (Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder.) These are real
disorders, and only about 20% of
adolescence with a mental disorder
will receive treatment/help for it.
Depression is very common among young adolescence. As puberty strikes, so do the
mood swings. But thats not just what depression is. Depression is the feeling of sadness,
emptiness, loneliness, inadequacy, and low self-worth for a period of 2 weeks or more.
Depression can be lethal. An estimated 15 percent of patients with major depression die by
committing suicide. It can also exacerbate such medical problems as heart disease and diabetes,
reducing the life expectancy of people with those conditions (Lozano, Andres M.) As
depression deepens and deepens, it often times leads to suicidal thoughts if the proper care is not
received. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in youth ages 15 to 24. More teenagers and
young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke,
pneumonia, influenza and chronic lung disease combined. Over 90 percent of children and
adolescents who commit suicide have a mental disorder (Facts on Children.)

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Anxiety is another common mental disorder among teens and children. Anxiety is often
described as nervousness. However, this is not the same type of nervousness. This is such
nervousness that it keeps people from being able to think clearly and live a normal life. Some
anxiety disorders are more commonly due to the environment that one is surrounded in. Anxiety
can be treated/helped with medication, but is most effectively partnered with therapy as well.
Counseling is not a magic fix though. According to Bradly Erford, The goal of
counseling/psychotherapy for youth with anxiety is to improve their symptoms in the future as
well as the present. Thus a second important question is whether the effects endure after
treatment ends. Many clinical trials have conducted follow up studies after treatment to
determine whether the original interventions had staying power (Erford, Bradly T.)
As you can see, mental disorders among teens are becoming more and more common and
the Utah Youth Village is there to assist their needs step by step. Not only does this program help
children with these kinds of disorders, but children that have been neglected, abused or
misbehaved, or even just lacked structure and love from their families. Many children involved
with the Village are wards of state. This organization is there to provide nurture, direction,
consistency, in home specialists, therapy, parenting success strategies and much more.
As a community it is important to first, recognize the problem at hand. That many teens
are dealing with these kinds of things, and where do they turn to? Organizations like the Utah
Youth Village for a second chance at a better life. To help with this program within our own
community, we can donate to help with funding, becoming a foster parent, or taking the online
courses they offer to help better your own homes.

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Works Cited

Danzi, Allison P. Positive Parenting Interacts With Child Temperament And

Negative Parenting To Predict Childrens Socially Appropriate behavior.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 34, No. 5, 2015, pp. 411435.

Erford, Bradly T. Meta-analysis: Counseling Outcomes for Youth with Anxiety

Disorders. Vol 37. Is 1. Pg 63-94. Nov2015. Academic Search Premier,
Ebscohost. Salt Lake Community College Library, UT. 19 Sept 2015.

Lozano, Andres M., Mayberg, Helen S., Scientific American, 00368733,

Feb2015, Vol. 312, Issue 2. Treating Depression at the Source.
Academic Search premier, Ebscohost. 19 Sept 2015.

Unknown. Facts on Childrens Mental Health in America. Nami National

Alliance on Mental Illness. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.