Paris Hilton recently spoke with People magazine about her time spent at Provo Canyon School in the 1990s, and about the alleged abuse she experienced during her 11-month stay.
Social media users were quick to discount her claims, making jokes that the alleged abuse she disclosed probably was because the “school didn’t have a maid.” While it may be difficult for some people to muster up the empathy for a wealthy woman, Hilton’s experience is a cautionary tale of what often occurs in private residential centers.
I would know: Over a span of 25 months, I was sent to multiple teen residential facilities in an attempt to treat my mental health issues — including a center right here in the suburbs of Salt Lake.
Thousands of families desperately seeking help for their teens experiencing mental illness turn to the privatized “troubled teen” treatment industry as a last resort every year. It’s a billion-dollar industry, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to Utah’s economy alone, especially by marketing exceedingly expensive programs to out-of-state consumers.
While some states require that these privately owned centers be licensed, many are not subjected to strict regulations, oversight or monitoring. In fact, a 2007 report from the Government Accountability Office found that some residential centers falsely advertised programming models, staff credentials and student success rates. The same report identified that youth residents at U.S. facilities experienced severe abuse and neglect.
Mistreatment at privately-owned residentials is still occuring: In 2019, the St. George facility Red Rock Canyon School shut down after a number of accusations concerning staff members sexually assaulting students.
These programs prey on families that are seeking any kind of intervention for their teenagers. In more severe cases, such as mine nearly a decade ago, parents may entrust these programs to literally keep their teenagers alive, whether they are struggling with substance use issues, eating disorders or other conditions.
Though individualized treatment is widely accepted as the best model of care, many for-profit residentials implement extremely strict and highly uniform programs that focus on behavior modification. In fact, they often use unethical token economies to reinforce or punish certain behaviors. These economies are based upon operant conditioning techniques. (Yes, like the classic example of a rat in a chamber pressing the lever.) Facilities claim short-term “success” using these methods but, overall, they cause further harm to students.
Teenagers lose their agency to make the most basic decisions about their lives, such as what they can wear, who they talk to, what they watch and when they go to the bathroom. They may not see people outside the program walls for weeks to months. This wreaks havoc on normal development.
Residential treatment centers are, first and foremost, businesses. A growing body of research has shown that youth admitted to residential treatment programs often are later placed in a different center after “graduating” former programs. What’s more, studies have discovered the most positive gains of residential typically occurs within the first six months of one’s stay. That being said, any simple Google search will reveal that many private facilities market their average program length upwards of nine months, or even over a year.
Money talks, and a 12-month stay is highly profitable — despite the fact that it comes at the cost of another person’s well-being.
My hope is that, one day in the near future, the majority of for-profit residential treatment centers will be closed for good. Community-based care is a much more successful model that promotes age-appropriate autonomy, family and peer involvement, and healthy development.
No one should profit off the suffering of others.
Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro
Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro, Salt Lake City, is a journalist and the co-founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project Salt Lake City Chapter. She is also the assistant youth coordinator for the Youth Empowered Solutions to Succeed (YESS) grant, housed at the Utah Division Substance Abuse and Mental Health.
