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Michigan’s youth mental health infrastructure is in freefall, Bridge Michigan reports. Six years ago, there were 1,200 youth residential treatment beds across the state. But in the years since, 16 residential treatment facilities have closed, leaving fewer than 400 beds available.
The collapse has created a “perfect storm” of surging youth mental health needs, high staff turnover, and facilities so overwhelmed by severely ill patients that some simply can’t safely sustain operations, said Dan Gowdy, president of the Association of Accredited Child and Family Agencies.
Vista Maria, formerly the state’s largest treatment program for girls, lost its workers’ compensation insurance at the end of 2025 because staff injuries — broken knees and dislocated shoulders among them — had become too severe.
“I can’t keep staff safe,” Kathy Regan, CEO of the now shuttered Vista Maria, said in an interview last fall. “They’re getting their asses handed to them.” It closed in December.
The closing of Vista Maria may be warranted for other reasons as well, based on statements given at a press conference in February by eight girls and women.
Some said they were sexually abused and others mistreated in violent ways, including by being kneeled on until they couldn’t breathe, resulting in broken vessels in their face and eyes, the Detroit News reported.
“We believe what happened at Vista Maria was a real-life version of ‘The Hunger Games,” attorney Michael Jaafar told the newspaper.
He has spoken with more than 50 girls and women who spent time at the facility and plans to file a lawsuit against it.
“They came to Vista Maria, most of them because they were abandoned by their parents or by society, and they came there for protection…The protection they needed from Vista Maria did not happen.”
Documents from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) about the facility also showed dozens of violations in 2025, according to the I-Team at Local 4 Detroit. (See the MindSite News investigation for more national reporting about the troubled teen industry.)
With few in-state beds left for its most vulnerable youth, Michigan has been quietly shipping them throughout the country. It’s like “throwing them to the wolves,” said Laura Marshall of Cedar Springs, whose son was court-ordered to a long-term treatment facility in Wyoming.
“We had no control over where he was going,” she said. “There really isn’t any way as a parent to be able to vet what’s really going on.”
In at least one case, the out-of-state treatment worked, but it was extremely expensive. Eleanor Middlin was 15 when her family drove her 11 hours to a Missouri boarding school, spending $90,000 out of pocket on care Michigan couldn’t provide.
“I’m alive because of it,” she said.
As of September, 152 youth in the state’s direct-placement program were living in out-of-state facilities, some as far away as Hawaii and Arizona — more than double the 74 placed out of state in 2023, and up another 30 from the 122 distance placements in 2024.
The state spent more than $13 million on related costs last fiscal year, and that number is still climbing. For families, particularly those without the means to research and personally select privately funded out-of-state care, the distance intensifies the crisis.
The path forward is uncertain. For families currently navigating the system, community and connection with others facing the same circumstances is the most reliable resource.
Lawmakers admit that notable change is unlikely this year, with an election forthcoming and term limits binding some state legislators, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“I just don’t see it as something that they’re going to be willing to tackle,” said Republican State Rep. Matt Bierlein.
He is hoping that a 2022 voter-approved change to term limits, allowing officials to serve up to 12 combined years across both chambers, will provide lawmakers the time to build the knowledge and skill to enact meaningful change.
In the meantime, mental health providers and advocates are calling for trauma-informed care models, increased specialized bed capacity, and intentional state investment in training clinicians and other frontline staff who care for children and teens.