Published by KXAN 12/3/21
AUSTIN (KXAN) — After a year and a half of drug addiction without treatment, Anisa Madero spent her 17th birthday in a rehabilitation facility.
A birthday without cake, presents and miles from her high school friends, may not be the ideal celebration for most. However, Madero was grateful to spend any time in residential treatment — even her birthday.
“I wasn’t worried about whether I was going to pass my math test, or are my clothes going to be ironed for school tomorrow?” Madero said. “No, my situation was: Where am I going to lay my head at night?”
Today, Madero is 20 years old, sober and a community guest specialist at an adult drug treatment program. Her time in treatment as a teen played a crucial role in her current sobriety.
“Being in a facility with a lot of the women who are in the same boat in different water, it was kind of heartwarming, because an addict helps an addict; an alcoholic helps an alcoholic,” she said.
“If I was just learning about [sobriety] now, it’d be 10 times harder, at least 10 times harder,” Madero said.
Despite residential treatment centers’ positive effects for Madero and others, only a small number of women in the state receive residential drug treatment as teenagers.
Over 70% of beds available to adolescents for residential drug treatment in Texas are designated for males. Male juveniles in the state have more than double the options for treatment facilities a female the same age can access.
Although addiction rates are historically higher in men, the estimated 260-bed difference does not reflect the current need for female juvenile drug treatment in the state.
Published by KXAN 12/3/21
Before 2021, female teens struggling with addiction in Austin could access treatment less than two hours away from their families.
After the closure of multiple programs in 2020, only nine residential treatment centers admitting juvenile girls remained in the state — the closest located 160 miles from Austin.
“Where do they go? Where do these kids go now?” asked Rocha.
Residential treatment centers are drug counseling programs with typical stays of 60 to 90 days. The number of RTCs available to females under the age of 18 in Texas was already small, but less than a year into the pandemic, at least five programs serving young girls were cut.
All adolescent RTCs — all-female, all-male and co-ed — took a hit in 2020 due to a lack of referrals of teens into their programs. However, over 400 beds for males remain in the state versus an estimated 160 female beds.
These numbers are based on data obtained by KXAN through the Texas Public Information Act from the commission of Texas Health and Human Services. It is the most up-to-date listing of licensed RTCs kept by the agency; KXAN found inconsistencies in the bed counts after speaking with staff at various RTCs.