USC Center for Health Journalism Project

Featured Articles

Explore a featured selection of my writing work below.

A broken system: Investigating youth psychiatric residential treatment facilities in Arkansas

Several weeks after checking her 11-year-old daughter into a psychiatric residential treatment facility in Arkansas, Katie James raced back to the state from her rural home in Montana after learning from her daughter there had been a riot inside Perimeter Behavioral of the Ozarks in Springdale.“Big stuff went down,” James said her daughter recounted. “The fire department came, police came, girls started running and tried to escape. One made it all the way to the fence. Some were escorted off in...

DHS announces $5 million grant to support mental health, substance abuse programs - Arkansas Times

The Arkansas Department of Human Services is awarding $5 million in grants to support individuals struggling with mental health, substance abuse or intellectual disabilities. DHS announced the grant money in partnership with the Governor’s office Friday. The money will go to providers that offer residential treatment and supportive housing units for youth and adults. Unity Health in Searcy will receive $2 million for an expansion of youth substance abuse residential treatment facilities. Indepen...

The import business: How Arkansas residential psych facilities make money on out-of-state kids - Arkansas Times

Editor’s note: This story is the first in a series on psychiatric residential treatment facilities for juveniles in Arkansas. Lara Farrar’s reporting for this series was undertaken as a University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship grantee.In the spring of 2022, Katie James, a schoolteacher in the rural mountain town of Anaconda, Montana, faced an agonizing choice. Her 11-year-old daughter was hospitalized at Shodair Children’s Hospital in the Montana c...

Abuse at Arkansas youth psychiatric facilities spotlighted at U.S. Senate hearing - Arkansas Times

In a first of its kind hearing, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee heard testimony on Wednesday from experts across the country highlighting widespread, ongoing abuse inside psychiatric residential treatment facilities for children and youth, including some of the 13 facilities that operate in Arkansas.Reagan Stanford, abuse and neglect managing attorney with Disability Rights Arkansas, was one of three witnesses who testified in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning. The Little Rock-based advocacy...

Name change approved for Fayetteville youth psychiatric facility with checkered history - Arkansas Times

A state board on Wednesday approved a name change for a mental health treatment center for children in Northwest Arkansas that has a history of regulatory violations, including forced sexual contact between residents, buildings in disrepair and an employee sharing explicit content with a male juvenile. Piney Ridge Treatment Center in Fayetteville, a 102-bed psychiatric residential treatment facility owned by Acadia Healthcare, will change its name to Yellow Rock Behavioral Health. The Child Welf...