The Village treatment plan begins with the Special Treatment Unit, or STU, "an extremely intense therapeutic experience... unlike other locked unit programs... specifically designed to address resistance and introduce patients to our group-oriented treatment approach, which uses peer pressure to create positive change."
Sherwood says new patients are "fairly homogeneous. They all might be described as out of control. Most are heavy into drugs, wildly labile, and prone to fits of anger and depression. Many are treatment failures. These kids care very little for adult authority, but are hypersensitive to peer pressure."
Once a change in attitude is affected (namely, when the adolescent is more compliant to authority figures), patients move out into the cabins, where they begin what a former patient who wants to be known as Elizabeth calls "the Indian program."
Elizabeth, who is 17, says that her seven weeks in STU were anything but therapeutic.
"At first, I was kind of happy to be going," she says. "I wanted to go-- had my bags packed for two weeks. We [she and her mother] went and saw the cabins. It was like camp, with log cabins. They didn't tell us anything about the STU. That was a big shock. Things started to go down when they put me in a straitjacket. It's called a burrito...I would be in the middle of the floor where everybody could watch me..."
Elizabeth was diagnosed with bipolar disorder--commonly known as manic depression--when she was 7 years old. This diagnosis is somewhat controversial in some segments of the world of mental health care, where some psychiatrists--albeit a dwindling number--insist there is no such thing as bipolar disorder in children. Elizabeth, her family, and her psychiatrist have no doubts about her diagnosis.
In 1994, amid a bout of severe depression, she was having great difficulty relating to her peers, who teased her unmercifully. So the school system, with her mother's consent, made what is called an "educational placement" and enrolled Elizabeth for long-term treatment at Peninsula Village.
The results were disastrous. She spent a little less than two months in the locked building that is the first stop for new patients, who are required to stay there for an extended period before they can move out into the mainstream of the Village's wilderness program. The length of stay in STU varies according to each patient's responsiveness to the rigorous STU regimen.
Patients in the STU have their clothes taken from them, and although they are allowed to write letters home, they cannot receive mail or talk on the telephone with their parents. They are dressed in hospital gowns if they are deemed "elopement risks" or violent. Otherwise, they wear hospital scrub suits until they earn back their street clothes.
Less serious outbursts are handled by attendants who take offenders down to the ground and hold them there. More serious episodes may land patients in a "burrito" (straitjacket) or in five-point restraint--bound limb and torso with leather straps to a bed. Doors are locked, windows are covered, and lights are on 24 hours a day. Patients are escorted to the bathroom.
To prevent kids from forming "anti-therapeutic cliques," patients are not allowed to talk to one another or to make eye contact. Every move is monitored, and they must ask for permission to speak to attendants.
Sherwood believes he knows who Elizabeth is and says he made a mistake admitting her in the first place; that he gave in to the importuning of her mother to allow her into the program. Elizabeth's mother denies this claim, saying her daughter was placed there by the school system.
He says the STU is designed to force patients to work on their own problems and to work together as a group--to become responsible to their peers.
"We offer intense treatment you don't get anywhere else in this nation. This program is for people whose lives are messed up in a major way, on their way to ruining their lives or someone else's. Most of these kids are multiple treatment failures, and when they fail at the Village, they don't have many options left."
Elizabeth never progressed past STU, and was released (actually thrown out of the program) in far worse condition than when she was admitted.
Elizabeth was, and still is, under a psychiatrist's care and was taking medication to control her symptoms. Both she and her mother believe that her downward spiral began when the Village staff (against the advice of her psychiatrist, John Robertson) cut down on her Trilafon, an anti-psychotic drug she had been taking for some time. Journals that Elizabeth's mother kept of conversations with the Village social worker (whose job it was to serve as a liaison to the family because STU patients are not allowed to speak with their parents) show that the Trilafon dosage was cut in half.
Elizabeth, who was threatening to kill herself, was discharged from the Village in handcuffs and transported into town, where Dr. Robertson found a bed for her in the Children and Adolescents Psychiatric Services (CAPS) unit at St. Mary's. She was there for six weeks for treatment-resistant psychotic mania. It is hard for her to remember everything that happened, but she insists she wrote letters home that her mother never received, and that an attendant "busted" her lip during one of her manic episodes.
While I don't doubt this story, this happened 10 years ago, in 1997, based on the article posted. What exactly is the relevance of this to 2007? Can anyone share what the procedure is TODAY for the "Special Treatment Unit" at this facility? it's pretty standard, even in a hospital setting, to have a separate unit for newbies. In order to have effective change, you first have to establish what the current issues are, you can't be stuck in the past. We can talk about stuff that happened in these programs 10 years ago until we are blue in the face, but it's not going to accomplish anything if it's not relevant to today. I'd like to hear from someone who has been at this facility in the past year or two.
Go to "Facility Questions and Answers", Peninsula Village thread. Very current, very relevant to the article. My step daughter's experience in PV last year is on a par with Elizabeth's a decade ago. Nothing has changed - in fact, what goes on at PV now is
worse - they now use the "don't believe your child if he/she reports abuse, they're manipulating you" nonsense. From what I've read on old PV cached websites, that wasn't the case in the past. So, PV has not changed tactics, just improved it's ass covering skills.
"A separate unit for newbies"? PV's STU is a level 3 lockdown - not just a separate unit. It's sadistic. I can't imagine sending a child suffering from PTSD or depression into that environment. When my step daughter was at Peninsula Hospital, right next door to PV, she met girls who had attempted suicide because of what was happening to them at Peninsula Village.
So yeah, I consider the old article very, very important.
