DENVER — Staffers at a youth mental health treatment facility in southern Colorado were too quick to restrain kids — pinning bodies down, holding arms back — rather than deescalate problems before patients put themselves or others in danger, a disability rights group found.

In the first five months of 2024, employees of Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center in Cañon City physically restrained young patients an average of 150 times per month, or five times in a typical day, said Emily Harvey, legal co-director of Disability Law Colorado.

From January to May this year, staffers averaged 75 restraints per month — an improvement, but still far too high, she said.

“As an organization, we would advocate for no restraints, but we understand we’re probably not going to get there,” Harvey said.

Disability Law Colorado has a statutory role advocating for the rights of people with disabilities, including by inspecting facilities across the state and filing lawsuits. As part of its investigation into Southern Peaks, representatives visited the facility eight times since 2022 and interviewed nearly 50 current and former patients, Harvey said.

The organization defines restraint as staff using their bodies in ways that prevent patients from moving, such as by pinning them down or maneuvering their arms into positions that make resistance painful. They didn’t find instances of Southern Peaks patients being restrained with devices such as handcuffs, though staff did sometimes lock youth in rooms where they couldn’t easily harm themselves.

State law allows for restraint in cases where a patient’s “unanticipated” behavior creates a “serious threat of violence or injury” to the patient or others. Colorado has fewer than five psychiatric residential treatment facilities serving youth, which makes comparisons difficult, but Southern Peaks appears to be an outlier in how often it restrains patients, Harvey said.

The interviews gave a consistent picture of youth who feel unheard and that they aren’t receiving the treatment they need, she said. In the first six months of the year, 20 patients transferred to hospitals because of suicidal ideation or self-harm — an increase from previous years — and those they interviewed reported patients commonly viewed hurting themselves as a ticket to better conditions elsewhere, she said.

Jayla Hunt, 17, told The Denver Post that when she attempted to hurt herself at Southern Peaks, multiple staff members pushed her to the ground and held her arms behind her back until she calmed, which sometimes took as long as 40 minutes.

Her mother took her out of the facility in mid-October after staff didn’t allow her to take pain medication prescribed for a broken bone she sustained while doing flips during a recreation period.

“When you’re already in a bad headspace, I think it would make it a bit worse” to be restrained, she said.

After a restraint incident, staff members sat down with Jayla to talk about ways to prevent it from happening again. The people who attended the meeting generally stuck to the safety plan they came up with and helped talk her down before she hurt herself, but sometimes the plan got lost in the shuffle and she ended up being restrained by other staff, she said.

Southern Peaks, which serves youth aged 10 to 18, never seemed to have enough staff to supervise patients, so they sometimes went without daily phone calls home or showers, Jayla said. Some of the staff seemed to want to help, while others were quick to punish infractions such as using swear words or going to hang out in another patient’s room without notifying the person supervising the wing, she said.

Recruiting and retaining staff isn’t easy for psychiatric facilities, particularly those in less-populated areas such as Cañon City, Harvey said. When staff are tired and overworked, they’re less able to deescalate situations before they turn violent, she said.

No one returned messages seeking comment left for the director of Southern Peaks over multiple days.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment listed 152 licensed beds at Southern Peaks, but Disability Law Colorado reported it actually has 52. Pennsylvania-based Abraxas Youth and Family Services, which has treatment centers in five states, owns the facility.

In 2024, youth treated at an Abraxas facility in the Pittsburgh area filed a lawsuit alleging physical and sexual abuse. Nine teens temporarily escaped from a facility the company owned near Philadelphia following a riot in 2023, and guards at the same facility suffered minor injuries during a riot in September.

State inspections of Southern Peaks in August 2022, June 2024 and January 2025 didn’t find any problems.

In May 2025, however, inspectors faulted the facility for:

—Not checking on restrained children every five minutes

—Failing to assess whether restraints were appropriate for children based on their size, age, gender and trauma history, among other variables

—Not having a doctor sign off on restraint reports within 48 hours, as required

—Sometimes using email to notify parents that their children had been restrained, which didn’t allow them to easily ask questions

—Not holding debriefing meetings, meant to prevent future incidents, with restrained children and involved staff

The Colorado health department reported the facility had corrected the problems when its inspectors returned in August.

State agencies need to do a better job overseeing psychiatric residential treatment facilities, but ultimately, the solution is to offer care closer to home and in less-restrictive settings whenever possible, Harvey said.

“We as a state are failing kids by not having community-based services that can wrap around and support kids in their homes,” she said.

Southern Peaks cares for children with some of the most complex needs in the state, helping them stabilize and move to less-intensive settings, said Julie Popp, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Human Services, which oversees the facility’s license.

The department investigates any allegations of patient rights violations and works to immediately correct any problems it finds, she said.

“CDHS regularly engages with and reviews practices at Southern Peaks to ensure youth receive appropriate, high-quality care. While privacy laws limit what we can share about specific reviews or findings, we address any issues identified through that process,” she said in a statement.

Typically, Disability Law Colorado works with state agencies to improve oversight and processes. It does occasionally sue the state, however. In 2016, the state and the group settled a lawsuit over a backlog in criminal competency cases, though Disability Law Colorado later accused the state of breaching the agreement.

Southern Peaks has made some progress, particularly on hiring enough therapists to provide youth the treatment they need, Harvey said. But it also has backslid: Last year, the facility started running a youth advisory council and offering club activities, but neither was active during the most recent visit, she said.

“They said they intend to bring (the council) back, but it’s been a while,” she said.

Jayla said her time at Southern Peaks was a mixed bag. She had a caring therapist who taught her new coping skills and techniques to ground herself when strong emotions hit, but her urges to harm herself escalated under what she felt was a punitive environment.

“It changed me, but I don’t know if it was for the worse or the better,” she said.

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