Riot at Copper Hills Youth Center

The journalist Lyn Duff battled during her teenage years to be allowed to live the life she wanted. Her choice of partner didn't suit her mother and she was sent to a treatment center in Utah where she was forced to smell ammonia to learn her the right choice of a partner. She escaped and with legal help she got the life she wanted.

Years later the residential treatment center now operating under a different name is the in news again. A riot is the reason.

Comments show a understaffed facility with toxic mix of youth.

Fact is that no treatment center in the world can fix every issue. A treatment center needs to focus. It needs to specialize. It is costly but if corners are cut a dangerous mix of minors can be put together and either employees or the children will be hurt.

Of course there are also some who never should be put in treatment programs. Children with addiction should never be put in treatment programs involuntary unless the entire family is sent there for a short stay so they can prepare their roles as addicts and relatives to addicts. People cannot fix issues they don't acknowledge. It also goes for children. If addicts are sent to place involuntary it becomes a holding place and the minute the addict is released to the society the risk of relapse is high.

If you check out deaths involving addicts they often happen shortly after leaving the treatment center.

The treatment center claiming to have the higest rate of successes either keep the addicts in semi-confinement or sober living communities where they cannot afford to leave from creating a kind of cult environment.

Copper Hills Youth Center is a "we take them all" treatment center. It has a history of incidents where employees and children were hurt. It should have been shut down years ago for the sake of both employees and children.

It had another name while Lyn Duff was confined in it but the mismanagement seems to have continued.

Hopefully the riot will force the authorities to close it down.

Source:
10 teens arrested in riot at youth treatment center (Desert News)