That place was a joke, sure for an average minded kid it was bad but i was way to smart for the staff there and could manipulate myself out of anything, I made it to level 4 within a month and was sent back home to indiana in 6 months. My dad thought he was doing somehting good for me but it was just a big waste of money because he did not know how to raise a teenager. Some of the kids there were treated badly and were put in the tank so to speak and made to hold books in front of themselves for hours against a wall with no windows or anything. I had made some good relationships with alot of the staff and one particular I still think about to this day and his name was Mark, when i was there in 93 this hispanic kids hit and broke a staff member named Dale i believe for no reason. To me it's the therapist and some bad apples that ruin it for everyone else, not every staff memeber there when i was were bad. I had a great time there but i was different than most that were sent by the court systems. I have often thought about going back there and trying to make a change. I do not ever believe a child should be harmed or put on medication, to me that is lazy parenting and bad teachings. I am 30 now and work for a major hospital and have 2 beautiful kids and wife. The moral is kids are kids and society all of the sudden things something is wrong with us! lol

91-93
I have to agree with you. I was well liked, and taken home by more than one of the staff members on holidays and my birthday. It is all about playing the game with those people. They are not too smart. I would not say that I had fun, but I defiantly made the best out of my situation. I met two of my best friends there, so I don't regret PCS entirely.

But it was different with us, because we were not mentally ill. I only assume that you are not mentally ill because of your post. I was treated very well while I was in PCS.

The main problem with PCS is that they take mentally ill kids and punish them for doing things related to their disease. PCS is not a treatment center like they claim. I saw a lot of mental abuse. On the girls campus, if you were not liked, you were treated like scum. I was hardly in investment, so I did not see much of the physical abuse; however, it has been described to me by very trust worthy people. Much of the mental abuse came from the fact that the unit staff were not very worldly people. They were not use to dealing with kids that were from poor parts of the country. They were treated like garbage. They were made fun of to their faces.

As for the physical abuse, there was a girl that overdosed drugs on a home visit during my stay. She came very close to death. They made that girl, whose face was paralyzed, go back to PCS. She did not get proper drug counseling, nor did she get the medical care she needed. She was severely punished for this. I am sorry, but I do not think that someone who almost dies needs to be punished three days later. How can you punish someone for an addiction? They need to be treated.

There was another girl I knew very well. She flipped out at PCS. She spent her entire time in investment. She would be put in isolation rooms for days. This girl had a swollen stomach and yellow skin. I could only assume that these things were from lack of sunlight and physical activity. They kept her like this for a year and a half before sending her somewhere else.

Well, Geoff, I'm glad someone had "fun"! Sure, I occassionaly had a bit of fun. I liked that river trip, too.

However, as a medical professional, I am well aware and appalled of the PCS program. The more I learned in school, and the more I practiced nursing, the more I realized just how bad PCS is. Their practices simply would not be acceptable in the medical community. Yet PCS continues to get away with this because they misrepresent, misguide, manipulate, and lie (I have witnessed this firsthand).

Clearly, I have a responsibility to inform the public about (not just) my experiences, but also those things I witnessed involving other girls.

hey Angela,

I have 2 kids now and would never put them through any program like PCS or any other program like it. I was just a spoiled kids who's father did not know what to do with a teenager so he passed me off to PCS. I did not have mental illness's or anything and have never taken any form of mental narcotic but the kids that did have those problems there were treated badly and the staff for sure played favorites, i was just lucky that they all liked me!

That is the truth. I saw what they did to people they did not like. It was not pretty.

i was one of them.i wish i could close that place down!