>>’They’re not doing well’: New Austin center opens for teens with prolonged mental illness

At the far southwest end of Austin and behind secluded gates, lies a center for healing. This fall Paradigm Treatment opened its first Texas location on a 20-acre property here. It’s the first location outside of California.

The center is home to up to 16 teens ages 13-17, who need a residential treatment center for mental health. They stay between 30 to 90 day.

Residential treatment is for next level of care, often after someone has tried regular mental health therapy, been hospitalized or tried an intensive outpatient program or a partial hospitalization program.

Insurance often covers much of residential treatment stay. Without insurance it can cost hundreds of dollars a day.

Paradigm chose to expand to Austin, said Todd Dugas, the executive director of the Austin location, in part because of the familiarity with the city. CEO Dustin Wager lives here, but also “Austin has a great talent pool (in mental health therapy) compared to other areas of the country,” Dugas said.

It’s not the only residential treatment program for teens in Central Texas, but the existing ones typically have a weeks- to months-long waiting list, making the need for another center a welcome addition for parents looking for care.

Expanding mental health scene

Central Texas has been slowly increasing its mental health centers. St. David’s HealthCare is building a freestanding $33.8 million, 63,000-square-foot behavioral health hospital. It will have 80 beds and room to add 12 beds. It will be built on land St. David’s already owns south of St. David’s North Austin Medical Center.

That hospital will focus on adolescent, adult and geriatric patients and will have indoor and outdoor therapy areas, a separate area for adolescent care and outpatient services.

“This will help to service a huge unmet demand,” said David Huffstutler, president and chief executive officer of St. David’s HealthCare in February when the plans were announced.

“We often have difficulty placing patients with mental health needs,” he said. Patients who come to its emergency rooms currently have to wait a long time in the emergency room until St. David’s can find a behavioral health bed outside of its network, Huffstutler said. “It’s not the ideal situation. This will help us improve those services.”

Rock Springs hospital in Georgetown is building a new adolescent unit to double the number of adolescent beds from 12 to 24. The unit is expected to be completed next year.

“We know that the number of adolescents dying by suicide in Texas exceeds that national average,”said Erin Basalay, CEO, Rock Springs. “We opened our initial 12-bed adolescent unit just over a year ago, andwe’ve already seen the difference it has made in the lives of families across our community. We arelooking forward to soon having the ability to care for even more teenagers in need.”

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens in the U.S. and in Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Texas, 67.12% of communities in 2021 did not have enough mental health providers to meet Federal guidelines, the CDC found.

The kids who find Paradigm

Paradigm often sees kids who have tried self harm or a suicide attempt. They have been to the hospital; they’ve tried a partial hospitalization, Dugas said.

“They’re not doing well,” he said. “They don’t want to go home; they don’t want to go back to the hospital.”

Many of the kids have more internalized behaviors, Dugas said. Often, they’ve been bullied; they are introverts. “You ask them how they are doing. ‘Fine’ is the answer,” Dugas said.

Yet, they are self-harming, not doing well in school, not doing well with peers. The pandemic has made it even harder, Dugas said, as routines and human interaction got disrupted.

“The impact of COVID-19 has been devastating to families. It’s a cascading impact for children,” he said.

Paradigm does not treat people with substance abuse. Instead, the focus is on mental health.

The teens receive daily intensive individual therapy, group therapy and family therapy. It’s about 30 hours a week of therapy.

“They are eager to learn something more effective,” Dugas said. What they have been trying hasn’t been working, and “they don’t know what else to do.”

Sports, school, mental health

Paradigm also has a sports program to keep middle-school and high-school athletes in training while they’re in treatment.

School happens year-round and is coordinated with the patient’s home school. Often, these kids are behind in school because they haven’t been attending regularly before they came to Paradigm. They can use individual instruction time at Paradigm to catch up.

The teens stay in casitas that look like bedrooms with four beds in them and a separate bathroom. The kids are divided by gender. Often, part of the treatment is getting kids back to sleeping at night. There are no devices in the bedrooms to distract them. Computers are available for schoolwork only, and that’s done in the school/social/dining room.

Paradigm also has a garden for kids to watch something they plant grow. That garden gets used by the chef to create their meals, which are focused on nutrition to also help improve mental health. Paradigm also uses the grounds to do walk-and-talk therapy, or do group therapy outside.

“They can start to take a breath and ground themselves in this setting,” Dugas said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Paradigm Treatment opens residential treatment center in Austin