Black Americans and restraint utilization in mental health residential treatment centers  NSG-556 Health Perspective of Culturally Diverse, Rural, and Underserved Populations

Black Americans and restraint utilization in mental health residential treatment centers Children and adolescents are commonly restrained during treatment in residential centers to prevent them from harming themselves and others. Restraint use can result in emotional and physical harm, even death. Therefore, the use of restraints should be limited to when they are absolutely necessary. These effects of being retrained may be more harmful for youth who have suffered traumatic events, and this is a group that is disproportionately represented in the residential treatment center patient population. In, “An exploration of youth physically restrained in mental health residential treatment centers,” Michael T. Braun, Nicole B. Adams, Courtney E. O'Grady, Deserai L. Miller, and Jonathan Bystrynski (2020) explored the pattern of restraint utilization in mental health residential centers for minors relative to age, sex, race, and primary diagnosis. While this article exposed several patterns regarding the utilization of restraints in youth mental health residential centers, there are limitations related to interpreting the data and finding meaningful and useful information that can inform and transform care within these facilities. The first author of this study partnered with a residential treatment provider in the Midwest who had facilities in several states and provided the research team a dataset with information about children and adolescents living in six residential treatment centers along with their correlated restraint incidents during a three-year period. Each child was represented by a number, along with demographic details including their year of birth, sex, race, and primary diagnosis. The dataset utilized in the study contained information about 794 youth involved in 13,339 restraint incidents. This dataset does not include all of the children in the treatment facilities over the three-year period; only those involved in restraint incidents. Furthermore, actual census information indicating the number of youths in the facility at a given time was not