Associated Press on WDAM-TV [New Orleans NBC affiliate] and the [New Orleans] Times-Picayune:

A report released by a non-profit group shows that children in group homes licensed by the state of Louisiana aren’t properly protected, and are placed in facilities that in many cases have been repeatedly cited for safety and health violations.

The Advocacy Center says in its report that children … too often aren’t given the mental health treatment, medical care and protection they should receive.

… Currently, the state has no power to issue civil fines against care providers that fail to meet minimum licensing standards, according to the report. This has led to some homes being cited year after year for similar violations.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Students with mental illness are becoming more common in Illinois public schools, and consequently school districts face skyrocketing bills for tuition at therapeutic private schools.

At a time when the state’s budget woes have stanched the flow of new money to public schools, its budget for private tuition has grown by double digits each of the last five years, to $139.4 million this year from $47.1 million in 2003.

Driving the increase, in part, is the fact that emotionally disturbed children in Illinois are much more likely to attend private schools—often at taxpayers’ expense—than students in other state

From the Houston Chronicle:

Nearly half of the youths locked up in the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center [have] mental health problems — far more than the estimated 20 percent with mental disorders in the general youth population — figures released Thursday show. [Harris County includes Houston.]

These youngsters, mostly teenagers, have been diagnosed with maladies including bipolar and attention deficit disorders, according to data compiled by a group of organizations studying the issue. Nearly 20 percent have severe emotional problems, the data show, and a quarter had never been diagnosed previously.

“For the first time ever we’ve collected amazing data that really give us the hard facts about what issues are there and what diagnosis we need to treat,” said Betsy Schwartz, president of Mental Health America of Greater Houston. The nonprofit agency and the county juvenile probation department are coordinating Operation Redirect, a collaboration of local groups trying to prevent mentally ill kids from ending up behind bars.

See related posts:

• Mentally ill strain Georgia prisons
• Editorial: Help — not jail — needed for people with mental illness

From the Boston Globe:

There is a role for aversive therapy if it is practiced with great restraint and respect. But such was not the case in August, when two emotionally disturbed teens in a Stoughton group home run by the Rotenberg center were given dozens of electrical shocks at the direction of a telephone caller posing as a medical supervisor. That caller was later identified as a former student.

The fact that the staff was so easily duped speaks to both poor screening of new hires and a dangerous lack of training. On that night, at least, the center resembled not a therapeutic environment but the infamous Milgram experiment, which measured the willingness of ordinary people to hurt a test subject based on nothing more than the verbal order of a phony scientist.

(more…)

A federal report released yesterday detailed thousands of examples of reports of abuse in privately run boot camps and residential “treatment” centers for troubled youth.

The report also found that managers of these programs, which are largely unregulated, faced little or no punishment for their actions.

The report, by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, examined the cases of 10 teenagers who died while at programs in six states, finding “significant evidence of ineffective management” and “reckless or negligent operating practices.” The report detailed evidence that teenagers were starved, forced to eat their own vomit, and to wallow for hours in their own excrement.

The term “troubled youth” is a catch-all that may often include adolescents with mental illness or emotional problems.

Other accounts here and here.

From the Boston Globe.

A recent report on the use of electric shock at a Massachusetts school for children with disabilities has prompted calls for legislative action.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center of Canton is believed to be the only school in the country that gives children electric shocks as a form of treatment. It has 230 students with such conditions as autism, mental retardation and emotional problems.

See earlier stories here.

Daniel Golden, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offers the theory that inadequate special education services failed to remediate the emotional problems of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui, and thus were partially to blame for the murder of 32 students and faculty members there. The story is yet another in a series of articles in that newspaper that find fault with the way special education services are being delivered.

Details of Mr. Cho’s experience in special education, which are only now coming to light, suggest that high schools may be paying too much attention to the academic advancement of bright but troubled stdents and not enough to their emotional disorders…

When the students move on to college, schools are rarely warned, students get help with special needs only if they seek it, and psychological problems can flare up, sometimes with devastating consequences …

In an earlier era, students with emotional disorders often dropped out of school or were educated in separate facilities. Today, they typically take mainstream classes — with accommodations as needed — and many go on to college.

From the Wall Street Journal. Registration required.