About Teen Challenge – The Midland
Teen Challenge is a national, nonprofit network of faith-based rehabilitation programs for people of all ages, founded by the Reverend David Wilkerson in New York in 1958. The organization’s Midland center – located in rural West Texas – offers long-term, residential Christian discipleship programs for men and women. Teen Challenge – The Midland accepts individuals who are on parole.
Elsewhere in Texas, Teen Challenge operates a women’s campus in Houston and a program in San Antonio.
Treatment & Assessment
The program lasts at least 13 months, and sometimes up to 18 months. Residents commit to a minimum of nine months at the rural facility, during which time they pass through three levels of instruction: foundation, basics, and advanced. Over the course of this period, residents must begin to develop a relationship with Jesus, and they also work on the areas of life skills, problem solving, social interactions, family, leadership, and goal setting.
Following this, residents move to the nearby town, where they live on a Teen Challenge campus for four to six months and must be engaged with a local church community, maintain employment, and stick to a budget. Residents at this stage of treatment are also expected to participate in outreach efforts and show continued spiritual growth.
Staff Credentials
The executive director of the Midland facility is a former oil executive currently in long-term sobriety. There is currently no further information provided by the facility regarding its treatment staff; however, the single alum polled by Best-rehabs.com to date on the staff’s level of training and experience gave it three out of five stars. The other individual polled by Best-rehabs.com gave the center five stars for the level of staff support it provided.
Accommodations & Amenities
Men and women sleep at different centers, each decorated in a traditional, somewhat dated style, though the genders do sometimes come into contact at the treatment center. However, there are strict rules about their interaction: they must at no time be closer than 12 inches to one another, and they may only be in a room together when there’s a member of staff present. In fact, there are strict rules of conduct applying to everything from spirituality to personal hygiene. Psychotropic and other kinds of medications are banned.
The single alum polled by Best-rehabs.com to date complained that the facilities were “old and uncomfortable,” and gave the center three stars for its cleanliness, two stars for its accommodations and meals/nutrition, and one star for its exercise and leisure offerings. The other individual polled by Best-rehabs.com to date gave the center five out of five stars in each of these categories.
What Alumni Say
The single alum polled by Best-rehabs.com to date would recommend Teen Challenge – The Midland. “Over all it was a good experience. They help you to get back on your feet with a post graduate home to live in,” the reviewer wrote, despite not liking the accommodations, as noted above. They gave the facility four stars for its treatment effectiveness, three stars for its family participation, two stars for its counseling options and its ability to treat co-occurring disorders, and one star for its holistic offerings.
At the time of this writing, the center had three five-star ratings with no accompanying commentary, all left on Google.
What Friends & Family Say
The single loved one polled by Best-rehabs.com to date would recommend Teen Challenge – The Midland. “Good leadership and family support,” they wrote anonymously, giving the facility five stars for its holistic offerings, counseling, and family involvement, as well as for the overall quality of its addiction and mental health treatment.
Financing
There’s a non-refundable admission fee of $2,500, and Teen Challenge does not accept insurance.