After I got my parents to come visit me for 3 days after not seeing them for 5 months. Eva Carlston Academy: Parent Review. Currently, our daughter is part of a private Facebook group of graduates of Eva Carlston Academy. SODAs stand for situation, options, disadvantages, advantages. It is not treatment to be forced to lie about ones experiences because if one says a bad thing about the program one will receive a large consequence for lying. If we did not eat everything on our plates we were given a severe negative consequence. so you got 250 points for doing your room chore, house chore, and workout. We had to eat every bit of food on our plates in a specified time frame, for example breakfast was required to be finished within 10 minutes including preparation. These restrictions can very easily cause eating disorders with a child not being able to feed her body properly and ignoring natural hunger signals as it needs nourishment during these developmental years. Eva Carlston is a female owned and operated facility that gives girls 12-18 a second chance in life. Residential Treatment Center for teenage girls licensed in the State of Utah with a focus on the arts It occurred, Rayburn says, in the basement of Eva Carlston. That was all the food they gave you after eating serving size portions of food for dinner which was at 5 pm. When we went swimming we were forced to leave in wet swimsuits with wet hair because there was no time to change. The rest of the staff seemed to really enjoy punishing the girls and enjoyed the power. Eva Carlston became a NATSAP member in 2015. oh also on saturdays we either did photography, acting at SLAC, or volunteer work(shoveling, intense cleaning, taking down christmas lights. The substance abuse group provides accurate, fact-based information about the short-term and long-term health effects of substance abuse. I knew if I went to the hospital, I would be able to talk to people.. If you needed to be sent to a different floor of the house a staff screams out to another staff member. The staff seemed more like prison guards. The only part of this program that was helpful was the individual therapy. I had to quit after only a short time because of the cruelty I witnessed there. JDK-8141210 : Very slow loading of JavaScript file with recent JDK It has a maximum enrollment of 44, and the average length of stay is reported to be around 12 months. Being told every single day that doing your best isnt enough and you will never be enough takes a toll. I will say that staff there(not including the owner and founder, Kristi Ragsdale) are mainly caring people, but they cant help when the entire program is behavior based. Hannah (Google Reviews), 4//3/2016: (SURVIVOR) I dont even know where to begin with this place. Once there, she says she was strip-searched, forcibly showered, and then entered into the program against her will. They put so much shit on our shoulders that we cant take. The rest of it was not only unhelpful for me but harmful and traumatic. Girls progress through the levels by earning points in a merit/demerit based system. If any former ECA students see this, know that I am so sorry for what you went through and for any role I played in it. I do know Eva Carlston was deeply harmful to our depressed, anxious child. For some people that was enough food and for some people it wasnt. I am genuinely sorry that your daughter has suffered in the way she has. Our daughter experienced heightened anxiety due to the intense scrutiny and struggled with the constant fear of earning negative consequences. It's through a combination of sophisticated therapy, mentorship, the arts, and experiential learning that . The NPI number of Eva Carlston Academy is 1427330968 and was assigned on September 2011. I do know Eva Carlston was deeply harmful to our depressed, anxious child. The campus contains three houses, in which anywhere from 12 to 16 girls live. I was in a juvenile detention center before ECA and I can honestly say I got treated better there and had more rights. The staff comes across as uncaring and inhumane given the fact that these girls are intimidated and punished for showing any sign of emotion. They were so desperate for food, and part of punishment involved not receiving snacks/additional food. Girls were forced to starve themselves because everyone had to take measuring cup servings. With regards to the schooling, there were more negative points given for bad grades than positive points when good grades were achieved. When I left ECA my eating disorder had never been worse. I'm glad that a parent can say that Eva was not a great choice. Rae alleges that she had her shoes and her right to use the bathroom and shower in private taken away, and says she was isolated from the other students. Some of these sessions turned violent. Girls will investigate the physical, psychological and behavioral impact . These are just a few examples of what happened to me while I was there. We werent aloud to have access to TV, Phone calls, Dessert, free time if we got in trouble, like I said we had to sit in a room and not talk to anybody and write essays because if we didnt they would take control of that in a very awful manipulative way. If it was reeses pieces you got a fourth cup of reeses pieces and that was it. Girls can be isolated from all their peers and sentenced to rooms alone with staff. I had to drink those on top of all my food and everything, she says. Staff promised that they would get me a smoothie after my surgery. The therapeutic portion of ECA is functionally separate from the daily living milieu and its Family Teaching Model, resulting in a treatment model this is highly compartmentalized. I got in severe trouble for going against the rules and acting out. Corrie Norman is the current Academic Director of Eva Carlston. Constantly living in fear. There were some therapeutic benefits, but they were by far outweighed by the emotional abuse, intimidation, and extreme conditions. I cant speak for every graduate, but I have had the privilege to stay in touch with many alumnae, most of whom I was able to get to know quite well at ECA. One staff member took a picture of my back. The campus contains three houses, in which anywhere from 12 to 16 girls live. I write this review in hopes of reaching parents who are considering sending their depressed, anxious daughters to this program. The dietary restrictions at ECA are incomprehensible. Eva Carlston Academy (Covecrest) Salt Lake City: 16: 0 Inspections: Eva Carlston Academy (Draper) Salt Lake City . Save your daughter the trauma of going here. The staff are inconsistent yet girls are punished if they dont adhere to all the staffs expectations. This program appears to be terrific but our daughter came out of the program deeply traumatized. okay lets talk about the food situation here. There arent very many good ones out there if any. I hope therapy with your daughter continues, and I hope her disordered eating gets better-- for a few months, my house was put on measuring cups because we took more than the serving sizes (I still have those half-memorized, and they're really not enough for a normal eater, especially with the work-outs we did) which severely impacted people's eating. Theyre best described as really, really intense therapy, more like brainwashing. Hubbell says Courtney ran the trainings, which they also call feedback heavy. She called me up and essentially forced me to expose my deepest, darkest trauma, they say. The staff seemed more like prison guards. Thank you for posting this review. The students live in a constant state of fear and dont tell their parents the truth because they are afraid of further punishment. , I am a former employee of Eva Carlston Academy. Eva Carlston Academy (2023 Profile) - Salt Lake City, UT That's the bottom line, whether that manifests as the entire industry being shut down, I don't know. I was naturally very skinny, and they would feed us tons of food, she tells Refinery29. Between 2005 and 2017, when social media usage grew . There are many memories from that time that have stayed with Hilton but there is one in particular that still haunts her. This helps them transfer new, pro-social skills to life after treatment. All correspondence and conversations with family are monitored heavily and any complaining to parents leads to a heavy negative consequence. Our team of professionals uses current best practices in our approach to addressing topics around gender and sexuality. i am also queer and anyone who was LGBTQ+ there was not allowed to talk about their orientations because it wasnt appropriate to discuss it outside of individual therapy, apparently. okay sorry I got off track, this place is just so f-ed up I just keep on thinking of more things I want to mention. They highly monitor social calls so we had no privacy to express our true feelings with family. The school has since been closed, some time after an article detailing the years of allegations of abuse made by students was published in the Tampa Bay Times. Eva Carlston Academy reviews that a mental health condition doesn't just mean sadness, anxiousness, or behavior of lashing out. They are sometimes prohibited from speaking to anyone or from using the bathroom at times. Charlotte Rayburn, 19, attended Eva Carlston Academy from 2018 to 2019, and also claims she took part in hot seat sessions. It is a horrible place that profits off the back of children and teens. She described one that took place early on in her year-long stay as being particularly disturbing. Clean your own fuckin house, get some maids, you have the fuckin money. Based on our familys experience, our educational consultant says she will no longer refer families to this program. I would never send my child here. Activities at Eva Carlston Academy include: During adolescence, peers have a profound influence on each otheroften eclipsing the influence of parents, teachers, and other adults. It is not treatment to be mocked, and berated by staff. The staff make girls work out every day, yet dont feed us enough food. 530 followers. To avoid punishment, our child gave us inaccurate descriptions of how she was feeling. I went to this residential treatment center for adolescent girls called Eva Carlston and if you dont want to read the rest of this post just DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING THERE! Even our daughter's therapist snuck in food for her to eat during therapy sessions. I just want to get this out there because I dont really hear anything bad about ECA on the internet and people need to know the truth before losing months and years of their lives to this traumatizing facility called treatment. Children, especially those with mental health issues, often develop these issues because of bullying, trauma, fear, violence etc. Friedrich says that one of the worst parts about eating was the way that it gave staff members an opening to shame the students. Dec 23. . . If a girl is underweight, they dont allow her to eat more food, they force her to drink ensures while shes crying. I wish I had. 878 posts. you wouldnt be allowed to speak to anyone, read a book, write in your journal, or do anything except silently work on assignments and ask for more. I would love for someone to call up the ed consultant and pose as a parent to see if they recommend it. Over a year ago, I willingly came into this program depressed, anxious, and suffering from an eating disorder and dissociative identity disorder (the latter was, at the time, undiagnosed) no behavioral problems. I am 25 now and this place still causes me extreme emotional distress. Our daughter lost 15 pounds in the first four months of her time there and she reported feeling extreme hunger every day. You are also punished for exhibiting symptoms of mental illness or emotional distress. Maya Friedrich attended Eva Carlston Academy from December 2014 to April 2016, and tells Refinery29 being put into EMDR therapy with the clinical director was a pretty common experience. , promiscuity, or substance abuse. 262 Likes, TikTok video from HausofMeow (@catlovescats95): "The High Frontier School was shut down after decades of abuse, neglect and seggsual assault on the minors that were there to be helped. Cat's Story. From a review of its website and literature, this program looks promising. also you could earn 500 points by accepting no. so say if you asked if you really needed to pee, and the staff told you no, you then had to wait 15-20 minutes to disagree appropriately. (which could earn you 500 points if you did it appropriately) so at that point I usually pissed my pants a little bit and couldve gotten a UTI for all the times they made me wait. Letters and phone calls with family are strictly monitored, by rule, and the girls are reprimanded for complaining to parents. the most disciplining, most strict, and unhumane piece of cardstock I have ever seen. Nothing from our visit with the students alerted us to the possibility of harm coming to our child. The program manipulated my parents into trusting them over their own daughter. Don't let the program dazzle you -- it's all a carefully cultivated front that masks the true coldness by using charisma and children who are terrified to speak out. The states that have the most lax regulatory requirements tend to have more programs pop up.. my parents had to demand a private phone call with me to find out all the freaky shit that was going on and even during my so called private phone call there was this psycho staff that came in and told me if I didnt hang up that she would physically take the phone from me even though I had permission and yeah that still makes no sense to me. Our daughter lost 15 pounds in the first four months of her time there and she reported feeling extreme hunger every day. i cant imagine how horrible it would be to go through. She currently still works as the Executive Director of Eva Carlston. We are a community of survivors and advocates who oppose the abusive Troubled Teen Industry. at the end of Eva I had severe issues with food. Together we can make a difference! Ill post a shorter version of it again because I think its crucial that people who care about their children know that this place is traumatic, abusive, and does nothing for the well-being of children. okay so in school you could get consequences for getting below a 70% on a quiz / test. NO ONE should be here talk about loss of education. I have made a formal complaint to the Utah State Department of Licensing. Her therapist was speaking, breaking all confidentiality, telling her all these things that her trauma wasn't real, that she's faking everything. We got phone calls with our parents for 15 minutes and if we went over they would grab the phone from our hands wether or not we said goodbye. Within the past ten years, researchers have found a strong connection between the rise of teen depression and social media. Adolescence is a complicated and delicate process of identity development and self-acceptance. My parents and I thought I would be mentored and guided with appropriate therapy so I could grow and heal. My stomach was constantly grumbling and I lost maybe 15 pounds while I was there. After a year of learning to ignore hunger signals, our daughter, once a healthy eater of normal weight, left the program with disordered eating. so i went into eva on November 22nd which was a Friday. The level system consists of four levels, the first of which is called Daily. If you needed to be sent to a different floor of the house a staff screams out to another staff member.