About Us

---

SPRINGyouth started as a late-night thought that kept coming back - what if there was an organization dedicated to keeping kids at home? To create a team of professionals to provide intensive support and services for youth at risk of entering inpatient psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment centers, or the "Troubled Teen Industry," or TTI as it’s colloquially called. For those who don’t know, the TTI is an “industry” of hundreds of for-profit (and some non-profit) programs for kids, offering mental health or substance use treatment. Unsilenced.com does an amazing job of discussing and defining this industry.

For many kids, their struggles are complex - a mix of mental, behavioral, psychiatric, and medical issues that co-exist in such a way that efforts to help have been unsuccessful at best, harmful at worst. I remember a therapist telling my dad and stepmom to pin me against a wall and call the cops every time I started to have a “rage.” Way too often (but not always), trauma is a significant factor in the development of these struggles, which can be hard to identify in the best of circumstances. If you’re reading this, you are not in the best of circumstances. You’ve probably encountered a myriad of diagnoses for you or your child - diagnoses like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Bipolar Disorder, and more. Some of these may be accurate, while others have likely changed as more information is gathered, painting a clearer picture of what’s going on. At SPRINGyouth, we believe diagnoses to be useful tools for learning how best to support, rather than to label.

With so many different service offerings available, it can be really hard to know which one is “right,” especially if you’ve tried numerous options. One metaphor I like to use is that “treatment,” in the broadest sense of the word, can be much like psychiatry - trial and error of different medications at different dosages and combinations before finding the right fit. It can take time, but it’s more than possible. At SPRINGyouth, we connect you and your family to as many family support programs as possible, all while taking factors such as time, money, mental capacity, and burnout into consideration. Over time, we might increase some services, decrease others, add a service or two, take some away, or some other combination. We function as a team, where everyone involved in the care of the child has an important say, voice, and opinion. An example of a team includes:

• therapist,

• psychiatrist,

• pediatrician,

• occupational therapist,

• Certified Family Partner for the parents,

• peer support specialist,

• leader(s) of a support group the child is involved in,

• the child’s sport coach, guidance counselor, and favorite teacher, and

• the child themselves.

While this might seem like a lot of people, every person plays an important and influential role in the recovery and betterment of the child and their family, so everyone is essential.

If this sounds like you, your family, or a family you know, please reach out. Help, peace, calm, and hope are available. Starting in the next couple of months, SPRINGyouth will offer services to those residing in a 15-mile radius to the University of Texas at Austin, though exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis. Together, we are committed to mental health advocacy and ensuring that every child and family receives the support they deserve.