Despite it being almost two years since publication, the October 2017 New York Times Magazine article featuring Mountain Valley with its cover story still resonates with readers and, thanks to online searches by distraught parents looking for help for their anxious, avoidant adolescents, still prompts weekly phone calls to the MVTC admissions office.

The article, Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?, was written by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a best-selling author, and a tenured professor of writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College. Over the course of the twelve months that Denizet-Lewis devoted to the writing of the article, he tracked two Mountain Valley residents, Jake and Jillian, from MVTC’s then campus in Pike, NH to the University of North-Carolina and a public high school in Florida, respectively, with the hope of finding out if parents, therapists and schools are helping  anxious teenagers by protecting them or pushing them to face their fears. Mountain Valley, a program that specializes in the latter, was the perfect place for Denizet-Lewis to test his hypothesis.

Denizet-Lewis’s masterfully crafted piece went on to become the most read New York Times Magazine article of 2017. In addition, it gave birth to a firestorm of other media coverage, including interviews on NPR and XM Radio. Benoit has also been generous with his time, and has represented MVTC at parent and alumni gatherings in New York.

To learn more about Denizet-Lewis, we encourage you to visit his website.