With no exaggeration, Maple Lake Academy has been the worst experience of my entire life. I had experienced trauma which led me to seeking treatment, but this definitely topped it all. For me, nothing has been worse than being trapped in this hell-hole, run by incompetent college students and abusive therapists. First of all, our lives were mostly controlled by college students who have zero qualifications. They openly say they are not even qualified to give us advice of any kind, but are allowed to physically restrain and verbally belittle students. I have been falsely punished multiple times by higher ranking staff for the sake of calming down another student. They are usually twenty to twenty-four years old. I was closer in age to them than some students. The arrangements for school were also very poor. Students from middle school through senior year are placed in the same class. There were only two classrooms, both extremely small with only six seats. Classes would sometimes go beyond six students, forcing students to sit on the floor. There was no PE teacher as it was taught by the staff. Their highest level of Math is only Secondary 3. I had to excessively study for the ACT and SAT because I had already learned everything they taught in Middle School. People who supposedly have the qualifications to be responsible are never there. The nurse is someone I particularly had a problem with. She was never around and it took my over three months of asking for me to purchase new contact lenses. She placed the blame on me for not "advocating". I had asked multiple staff and followed up with them. The reason I couldn't take to her was because she literally was never there. One time I had bronchitis and was vomiting for TWO MONTHS, until they finally let me see a doctor. The food is extremely unhealthy. Every week, we would have microwave lasagna and Costco pizza. Most food would seriously be found in the frozen aisle. Several times, staff has forced me to eat bagels or yogurt even when it was expired. They would even claim it is perfectly fine to drink expired milk. I informed my mother about the food and she made a complaint. Staff and even my therapist blamed me for "complaining" when my mother was the one who simply asked me what we ate. On two occasions they forgot to feed me, and once, they flat out denied me breakfast and punished me when I ate an orange in response. The equine therapy aspect of Maple Lake is a total scam. My parents were told we were able to ride three times a week. We almost never were able to ride and only did so once a month if we were lucky. We were forced to sweep the barn instead. One "horses" lesson was waiting over an hour doing nothing for the vet to come for the last fifteen minutes of it. The therapists at Maple Lake Academy were extremely unfair, idiotic and abusive. Therapists who weren't even my therapist would criticise me. They would punish me harshly because they believed I was "unsafe" as they feared I would physically act out. Meanwhile, girls who actually were physically violent and abusive, would have their punishments lessened to give the therapists a false sense of pride over the "improvement". I am a capable young woman, but it was dehumanising to be told by a therapist, who wasn't even mine, that I would end up in the back of a car, dead. I had desperately tried to reach out to my parents, but my call would be instantly turned off if I ever said anything negative. My parents were heartbroken to find out what I went through when I visited home and told them, but were forced to send me back for the sake of finishing high school. I feel disgusted at the fact that this is a huge business, especially in Utah, where laws make it easier to run a treatment center there. I am extremely unhappy with my experience at Maple Lake Academy. Despite me being safe at home and currently attending college, the trauma still stands. Generally, I would not recommend treatment centers of any kind because there are many like this. If you are trying to be careful about where to send your child, I can guarantee you this is not the place - unless you want them to be miserable. read more

Noticed that the owners of Maple Lake have somehow been able to delete 10+ prior negative google reviews, some as old as 6 years! Don't let this place fool you. If that doesn't show the amount of manipulation and corruption, maybe think about the fact that their companies legal name is "Maple Lake Farms" They do no farming of any sort. Regardless, this place and it's owners are evil and money hungry. ALL of the workers are unqualified Mormon college students attending either BYU or UVU. The entirety of the facility is run by fear and it shows. No communication with the outside world. You receive ONE strictly monitored/censored 10 minute call to parents a week. They say that you can "earn" an unmonitored call but they stay right out the door and listen in. One negative thing about the program or any situation and they will immediately hang up the call, tell the parents it was "manipulation", yell at you and give you a week or longer punishment of staying arms length with a "staff". While here you will not be able to do anything unplanned recreationally on the weekdays and on the weekends you can occasionally play board games and they will sometimes show an approved movie. You will NEVER talk to anyone outside the facility. I know personally this hurt mine and many others social skills and social maturity in general. All "therapists" are actually only "licensed social workers" and are completely Mormon and for the most part very cruel and biggoted/immature. As for the fact that Utah will acredit this as a licensed educational facility is absolutely mindblowing. All students are essentially grouped together in the same classes. Everyone ages 12-18 takes the same classes and recieves the same education. This "school" will run you upward of $100k a year. I would not wish even the proportionally small amount of time I was stuck here on my absolute worst enemy. The amount of abuse I witnessed here in 7 months is more than anyone should in their entire life. If you are thinking of sending your child here, I beg you to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reconsider. read more

I am a former student from Maple Lake Academy for Boys. Maple Lake will try to paint a picture for you, a picture saying that it will help a wide range of people. This is blatantly false. They have "certified" professionals working with your kids. Citing directly, the majority of people that make up the company, are NOT licensed for their position. Citation: http://www.heal-online.org/maple.htm It was an abusive environment. A staff who was promoted recently before I left, broke a students arm, and had no repercussions whatsoever. It also has no regard for religious practices, in fact, anybody there who was Mormon, (yes i'm not just talking about the staff) was free to go to church weekly, and practice how they wished. Me, who is a Jew, was not allowed to go to synagogue, even on the most religious holidays, and they even organized and event over Yom Kippur. Academically, they deprived you of actual academics. You had four classes, only two were meant to teach you stuff. There was never a full day of school and the classes didn't even cover the information they needed. The grade system was skewed, and was graded based on compliance outside of school and emotional stability. My assignments were graded directly with high scores while I was struggling outside of school, but my overall grade was almost made me fail anyway. They do NOT let you speak out against the problems of MLA while you are there. You get twenty minute phone calls to your parents only once a week. Those phone calls are monitored by a staff in the same room, and if I tried to tell them anything negative about the place, you will be taken directly off the call. Eventually you can earn "unsupervised" calls which aren't supervised because there was a staff always right outside the closed door listening in. They have student legal rights posted, but they do not let you exercise any of them. DO NOT SEND ANYONE HERE. You are not able to say how bad it is until you are out of there, or you will face repercussions. read more

maple lake you bad dog, you deleted your google page because The TRUTH hurst don't it hmm? anyway i had the privlage of being in a PAIN COMPLIANCE restraint by some geezer named by the name "Churd" Richard Palmer. i will go the detailed steps of how it went down: 1. i got "angry with him and cursed" like any NORMAL teenager would 2. that boi didnt like that so he yelled "your on a yellow status" 3. i told it "hey I am walking away now" 4. the Boi didnt like that, it Ran at me like some mofia boss's goon would 5. i hid under a laundry table, because well he scared me 6. Rich called for back up 7. his goon arrived 8. they where Yelling at me to "get out from there before we make you"... 9. i obviously was terrified now, so i did what a rational HUMAN WOULD DO. I put a simple mechanical pencil in front of me to deter the hostiles 10... my head was slammed to the tile floor, my left hand was impaled by the mechnical pencil. then richard grabbed my head and with ALL OF HIS MIGHT jabbed both of his thumbs into my pressure points. 11..... his goon sat on my legs so i woluldnt thrash about 12...... they told me "it wont hurt if you DoNt StRuGgLE" uh news break that is simply NOT how pain compliance works. 13........ since i somehow scratched Rich, he said "you sTaBbEd mE so i had nO cHoIcE" 14 i was put on mattress the next day, which is a form of isolation. i could NOT talk too anyone but the biast program goons, i had to read therpy ONLY books and could only eat crackers and ramen and or chicken noodle soup. summery, maple lake academy is a bloody scam, they probably dont and never did have a therapy lisencse. i never saw the lisencing lady so yeah, Worst mistake of your life too send your child and give these greedy swine your money. since your chiild will probably end up like Sofi https://www.sltrib.com/news/2023/06/09/girl-died-maple-lake-academy-after/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/02/14/utah-regulators-say-girl/ read more

The google reviews site for Maple Lake Academy was taken down due to their negative feedback, which was all true. This place is terrible, abusive and traumatizing. I was at the boys school for 2 years starting in the Fall of 2014, and am still recovering from physical trauma. I also have to work on some mental trauma, as the physical pain triggers some memories. My first day was spent in a hold. Holds are not safe, and they are overused by the "staff" (Mormon College Students) at this facility. From these holds I have carpal tunnel, torticollis, and cervical paraspinal muscle spasm. I am still working on healing from MLA physically and mentally. I have wrist surgery scheduled for mid February and am figuring out the next steps for my crooked back. I was told by my "therapist" Logan Valentine that this was just pain, but if it was just pain another student's arm wouldn't have been broken, many patients there wouldn't be suffering, and I wouldn't have to be seeking as much care as I am if it weren't for what they did 7 years ago. Holds were used without hesitation as first line of "discipline." I never hit anyone, I punched a wall here and there and was put in holds constantly for not expressing my anger in the way the wanted me to. Logan Valentine, as well as every staff member at MLA, is not a licensed therapist. He often told students they should vote for Trump and spoke of politics/religion often. His solution for terrorism in the middle east was to dump all our prison and jail inmates over there from boats, each one with a knife to wreck chaos. This was how he thought. He gave me religious books often, and was my "therapist" for two years. I still talk to many of the students from this place, but in no way was this place good for me. Many former stidents are homeless/on hard drugs/in prison/ and the majority of the one's that aren't are still living with their parents in their early/mid 20s. read more

To protect my identity, I have chosen to use a pseudonym in posting this review. Today I turned 18 years old, so I thought I would write a review about a place that has indelibly changed my view on the mental health industry, but not in the capacity you might assume. I spent a little over a month at Maple Lake Academy, and it was the most traumatic, damaging, and harrowing experience. I can say with utmost conviction that Maple Lake Academy is replete with the most vile, ruthless, neglectful, abusive, and cruel staff. Tyrants, the staff spurred patient-authoritative figure dynamics that relied on fear mongering. Over the course of the time I spent here I was physically and emotionally violated, belittled, shamed, degraded and threatened: a painful and disempowering experience I would not wish upon my worst enemy. Maple Lake and their staff are a disgrace to the mental health industry. If there was anything particularly resounding that I took away from this ordeal, it is that the mental health industry capitalizes and monetizes on the misfortunes of the willing and trustful, exploiting families through manipulation and depravity. In the most prototype example of irony, my parents shelled out tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for the compromise of my emotional and physical safety. Please, and I urge you, do not send your child to this place. Please, and I urge you once more, do not entrust your child to these people. My parents and family had to learn this lesson after being taken advantage of and exploited in the most dishonorable and abhorrent fashion. I was apprehensive about writing this review, but did so solely in the hopes of saving someone else from undue trauma, and quite possibly, someone else's life. And just to throw it out there, I am now safe at home, healthy, happy, and thriving. read more

I went to Maple Lake in 2009, I am now a successful adult and I am still undoing the trauma from here. I was sent to MLA after I was raped, kicked out of my home and then OD'd, it was all too much for a 17 year old to deal with alone. They victim blamed me, I found out I had gotten HPV w/pre-cancerous cells. I tried to bring it up in group therapy, I lost composure, the therapist finished my sentence and said "she is sad because she does not know who gave her an STD". Staff told me it was messed up what I did and that they would not have if they had been raped. I also discussed other abuse in therapy. I was told then that what I was saying was lies and that I was doing it because the statement should trigger a mandated report. They said I was doing it for revenge so they would not comply with the laws. There I was left left trying to grapple with the fact my mom had done illegal things to me and the place I was in saw me as nothing but a lying whore. read more

My little brother attempted suicide at the boys school in 2015, and his therapist covered it up and threatened him not to talk about it. I went to the girls school, where i saw plenty of similarly unprofessional and uncaring behavior. The hands-on staff were a bunch of college students and the administration were distant and didn't give half a cold shit about a single child living with them. Do not send your kid here unless you trust sheer luck to bring them back alive. read more

Worst hotel ever! I tried to check out shortly after arrival and Richard used PCS on me. The food was good, but I had to go to school and every Tuesday a bunch of judgemental Mormons bothered me. Would be improved with a pool and guided excursions. It was a nice area though, so I ended up staying 10 months. What a vacation. read more

They literally have killed multiple kids with a official cause of death being "not given proper care" so go ahead and send your troubled kid there. They're going to have so little trauma and come back not even more troubled than when you brought them. TRASH read more

this place is abusive, children died here. do not send your kid here, if you still do anyway then you are a sicko

Did not enjoy the child abuse. Would not recommend, unless you enjoy child abuse.