What to know
- There is a severe shortage of psychiatric care for teenagers which has sparked strife and crime in a Westchester County town.
- As residents demand a solution, teenagers are denied the help they desperately need, putting them at risk of harming themselves or others.
- Dozens of teenagers with severe mental health problems are increasingly being sent to live at Pleasantville Cottage School, run by the nonprofit JCCA.
NEW YORK — A teenager stands in front of a car, asking the driver to end his life. Another teenager who stole a family’s chicken in their backyard and then ate it alive, right in front of the kids.
There is a severe shortage of psychiatric care for teenagers which has sparked strife and crime in a Westchester County town. And as residents demand a solution, teenagers are denied the help they desperately need, putting them at risk of harming themselves or others.
A video posted to a public Facebook page showed the terrifying situation a Westchester driver encountered, when a distraught teenager jumped in front of his car and refused to budge. He threatened to call the police, to which he responded with a terrifying request: he asked her to kill him.
While this was a startling and alarming incident, it’s not the only recent one. Local residents voiced their concerns at a hearing Wednesday night in Mount Pleasant, saying it was unfair for them to have to bear a burden the state has placed on them due to a shortage of properly equipped mental health facilities.
Dozens of teenagers, including the one seen in the Facebook video, with severe mental health problems are increasingly being sent to live at Pleasantville Cottage School, run by the nonprofit JCCA, formerly known as the Jewish Child Care Association. Teens are schizophrenic, suicidal, possibly even homicidal, according to program executive director Ron Richter, adding that the organization is ill-equipped to provide adequate care.
“These are very sick children,” Richter said. “We are not licensed or funded to provide the level of care for children who are psychiatrically ill as we are now.”
The Cottage School is intended to be a residential home offering therapy to foster children who have experienced abuse and neglect. But now they are dealing with fights, threats, even suicide attempts and serious accidents involving more than 30 children in the past six months.
A small percentage of residents are declining from caring for other children who need to be there. Staff are not allowed to lay hands on children, lock doors, or force them to stay on campus. Mount Pleasant Police Chief Paul Oliva said his officers visited the facility seven times in one day recently.
Earlier this year, a 17-year-old terrorized the neighborhood around Virginia Lane when he entered a family’s backyard and stole a chicken, before doing the unthinkable with the animal.
“This student was in our street with one of our chickens in his hand and he ate it alive, with the neck in one hand and the body in the other…feathers and blood everywhere,” said a neighbor. “My kids called the police, it was a nightmare.”
“It scared the neighbors. She scared me,” Chief Oliva said.
But according to a complaint filed with the state, the situation should never have gotten to that point. JCCA said the day before the teenager, who is schizophrenic, ate the chicken, he was taken three times to Westchester Medical Center.
Each time he was released: first after breaking the screen door and rear view mirror of a campus staff member’s car, second after climbing the fence on Virginia Lane and brandishing a rake.
“He was knocking on the fence, he said he wanted to hurt someone,” the neighbor said.
After the third discharge, he left the campus again and returned to the neighbor’s property. That’s when he grabbed the chicken.
“If you could see the way I was eating my chicken, it was clear I had a mental illness,” said the neighbor’s daughter. “She had a blank look on her face and she had no idea she was doing anything wrong.”
But even after the incident left a family traumatized, the hospital again refused to admit him, according to the complaint, adding that he kept talking about acquiring weapons, expressed his intention to kill his comrades in their sleep and take off the life.
“We seem to be failing to convince psychiatric emergency rooms that our children should be tested. I’m not even saying admitted, I’m saying tested,” Richter said.
In a statement, Westchester Medical Center said it could not comment on specific cases, but added that no one in need of physical or behavioral care is denied care at their hospitals.
The teenager in this case was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City for long-term care. But the JCCA will continue to care for children in need, because the state has given them nowhere else to go.
“JCCA would never say ‘Stop sending us kids,’ because right now … there’s no place for these kids to go,” Richter said. “The state has decided that we don’t want to have high-end residential psychiatric services for children.”
Why not? A new federal law limits the time children can spend in residential care, so the programs have been shut down. The pandemic has exacerbated mental health issues, and the state has reduced psychiatric beds for teens in recent years.
JCCA has written to New York State, saying that if they want these children to be cared for, they must establish a program equipped to do so. But Richter says they’ve been waiting for months for the state to act before another, perhaps even more serious crime occurs.
“Look at the New York City subway, look at what happened in Buffalo, with young people who have documented mental illness. God forbid, it’s happened before.”
New York state did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
