Cox Hospitals, Burrell Behavioral Health

Cox Hospitals
Burrell Behavioral Health
Springfield, Missouri
Nixa, Missouri
Milano House, Residential Facility for At-Risk Teens

If you or someone you know or know of is directly or indirectly "involved" with this agency, I urge you to do considerable research and digging before moving one step further with them.
I know, as a parent of a child who is Mentally or Behaviorally or Emotionally Ill child, you may be at your wit's end, but being well-informed may make all the difference between healing and further regressing in your child's condition.
I speak from first-person experience, as a former patient.
This facility is to be compared with a minimum security prison for teens.
Every day, every night, for two and a half years, I felt I was being punished for being sick and scared.
It got so traumatic that I "played the system" and "graduated" to self-medicate and strike out on my own as an under-informed young adult.
I've written previously about the lack of nutrition and how it contributed to a bad habit of poor eating that lasted nearly 15 years.
I've also written of depressing living conditions in which my only solace was a bed near a window once in a while as beds rotated.
I've written of the lack of privacy and dignity.
Oh, how I wish St John's/Mercy Hospital would build an alternative. It's night and day, the dichotomies of Mercy to Cox. Tragic.
It takes less than 5 minutes to note the differences as you go through admitting.
I ache for the children of this area, knowing they have no alternative unless they have considerable means.
So, please! Warn parents. If they exercise their right and authority as patent, it could make a difference in their child's care at a facility.
Don't be afraid to breath down the necks of care providers.
If they aren't caring, they aren't doing their job. It's as simple as that.