CASCADE ACADEMY
She may be bright, capable, and deeply loved, yet anxiety, OCD, or depression has made school, friendships, everyday routines, and family life feel increasingly impossible. Cascade Academy gives adolescent girls the time, specialized care, and daily practice they need to move through avoidance, rebuild confidence, challenge intrusive thoughts, and reconnect with who they are beyond their symptoms. In our intentionally small, relationship-centered community in Midway, Utah, clinical treatment, academics, recreation, and family work come together to support lasting change.
Discover how Cascade Academy helps students understand their anxiety, develop confidence in their ability to handle discomfort, and begin participating more fully in school, relationships, family life, and their future.
Why Families Choose Cascade Academy
Cascade Academy brings together:
Your child is surrounded by peers working through similar internalizing challenges.
No more than 26 students allows for personal attention and meaningful relationships.
ERP, I-CBT, ACT, and RO-DBT are integrated according to each student's individual needs.
Small classes, live instruction, executive-functioning support, and individualized academic planning.
Students practice confidence, flexibility, relationships, and distress tolerance through real-life experiences.
Parents are supported in making changes that help progress continue beyond residential treatment.
A warm, home-like environment provides space for students to heal, reconnect, and grow.
When Her World Has Become Smaller
Anxiety can gradually take over nearly every part of a girl's life. She may stop attending school, withdraw from friends, become trapped in perfectionism or rituals, avoid ordinary responsibilities, rely heavily on reassurance, or spend more and more time isolated in her room.
Depression may deepen the pattern, leaving her exhausted, disconnected, unmotivated, and unable to imagine that life could feel different.
What may look like refusal, defiance, or a lack of effort is often a young person trying to escape overwhelming distress. Avoidance may bring relief in the moment, but over time it strengthens anxiety and makes her world increasingly smaller.
At Cascade Academy, we help students interrupt that cycle. They learn to recognize anxiety, understand what keeps it going, tolerate discomfort, and begin approaching the parts of life they have been avoiding.
Specialized Long-Term Care
Short-term treatment may have created good momentum, but lasting change requires enough time to practice new skills across real situations: during school, relationships, family interactions, daily routines, recreation, setbacks, and transitions.
Cascade Academy is a long-term residential treatment program for adolescent girls whose primary challenges involve anxiety or OCD, often accompanied by depression, perfectionism, school refusal, social withdrawal, trauma-related symptoms, or executive-functioning difficulties.
Our program typically lasts 10 to 12 months, allowing students time not only to understand what they need to do differently, but to repeatedly practice living differently until healthier patterns become more natural and sustainable.
Clinical Spectrum
Each diagnosis is treated through evidence-based therapies tailored to your child. No two treatment plans are alike.
Anxiety is the #1 mental health diagnosis in U.S. teens, and rates among adolescent girls have surged in recent years. Anxiety is also the root cause of many other disorders. Treating it directly addresses what's driving everything else your child may be struggling with.
Cascade Academy treats teenage girls with a primary diagnosis of severe anxiety, including OCD, GAD, PTSD, social anxiety, panic disorder, and more. By narrowing our focus, our clinical team offers the specialized expertise your daughter deserves.
Your daughter heals in an environment free from the influences of drugs, alcohol, severe sexual issues, and violence. While some students may have experimented with these behaviors, they aren't anyone's primary diagnosis or focus of treatment here.
Real words from the parents, prospective families, and mentors we've walked beside.
"We really love the vision and her healing, blossoming and thriving with you guys and beyond!"
Treatment Happens Throughout the Day
A student may understand a coping skill while sitting in a therapist's office and still struggle to use it when they are tired, overwhelmed, completing schoolwork, navigating friendships, or facing an unexpected change.
That is why daily life at Cascade Academy is an essential part of treatment.
Students practice:
Our mentors, clinicians, teachers, and recreation professionals work together to help students apply their skills when they matter most: in real life.
A Small, Relational Community
Cascade Academy intentionally serves no more than 26 students.
Our small community allows clinicians, teachers, mentors, and program leaders to know each girl personally: to recognize when she is struggling, understand how anxiety presents for her, celebrate meaningful progress, and adjust support as her needs change.
Students live alongside peers who understand the experience of anxiety, OCD, perfectionism, school avoidance, and emotional withdrawal. Within this shared environment, they begin to feel less alone, strengthen social confidence, and learn how to build healthier relationships.
Family Involvement
You know your daughter in ways no treatment provider ever could. Your history, observations, values, concerns, and hopes are essential to developing an effective plan.
Families learn how to respond to anxiety without unintentionally reinforcing avoidance or compulsions, communicate more effectively, establish healthy expectations, and support continued progress after residential care.
Parent participation may include:
Treatment is not complete simply because a student functions well at Cascade Academy. They must also demonstrate that they can use their skills in the environment that matters most: home.
Preparing for Life After Cascade
The purpose of residential treatment is not to create success that exists only inside a program.
As girls progress, treatment increasingly focuses on
Following successful on-campus programming, families may receive continued clinical and academic support during a period of home practice. This allows the student, family, and treatment team to identify challenges, reinforce progress, and strengthen the transition before graduation.
You do not need to have every answer before reaching out. Tell us what has been happening. We will listen carefully, answer your questions honestly, and help you determine whether Cascade Academy may be the appropriate next step for your daughter.
Meet our admissions team
Director of Admissions
LeaKae has guided families through the Cascade admissions journey with warmth and clarity. She'll listen to your daughter's story, answer your questions honestly, and help you find out whether Cascade is the right fit.
Assistant Admissions Director
Elise partners with families from the very first conversation, bringing patience and care to every call. She walks alongside parents as they make one of the most important decisions for their daughter.
