Key Takeaways:
- North Carolina has launched its first specialized mental health unit for youth in juvenile justice, with 10 beds for intensive treatment.
- Young people awaiting mental health placements can often spend months in detention, usually because other facilities reject them.
- The two-year pilot will test whether specialized treatment can reduce crises and help youth access appropriate care.
Arkevious Armstrong, 45, returned to C.A. Dillon Juvenile Detention Center in Butner on Oct. 12. He had last walked out of the facility 30 years ago.
Armstrong spent four years of his childhood there, from age 13 to 17. This time, though, he came to celebrate the opening of a new behavioral health unit at the facility. The PIVOT unit is designed to provide more timely and intensive mental health care to young people in North Carolina’s juvenile justice system.
Bright blue walls and motivational phrases cover the newly renovated 10-bed unit; the goal is to create a more therapeutic environment than a typical detention facility.
“If a place like this was in place when I was there, I would have probably had a different outcome upon my release,” he said…