These facilities really bother me. This may be TMI... My teen son was at a charter school, he was in the principal's office for nearly getting into a fight when he shared that he had thoughts of self harm in the past. The school said that he had to have an evaluation before he could return to school, and they gave us a few contacts for facilities that could do the evaluation. We took him ASAP to the facility, I had cold symptoms so I was not allowed to enter. My husband went with him and we are very glad that he did. It was a facility that could lock down, they took my husband and son's phones, keys, wallets, everything. My husband used to work in a facility for juvenile sex offenders, so he recognized the situation pretty quickly. The staff conducted the evaluation and recommended some group counseling sessions but did not mandate anything. However, it is interesting to note that this happened while my husband was unemployed and we did not have insurance. I truly believe that if we had the insurance they needed, they would have mandated that my son stayed for a determined time and we would not have been able to do a damn thing about it. IDK

For what it's worth, our son is in a much better frame of mind with new friends and a nice girlfriend. We are a family that stands by the value of counseling, but we will not let our family be separated and we will do everything to solve an issue together. The whole experience just really made me cautious about the realities of these types of centers. The mental and emotional health of young people is no place for the capitalist industry to dominate.