Avanti Center

i started at avanti in 2025 and it was a wreck from the first day. the FIRST WEEK i attended avanti i knew i wasn’t safe. we had a crisis almost every week. there is little to no staffing, no freedom to express yourself at ALL. i am truly disgusted by how i was treated as a black woman. i was treated like a dog, no one LISTENED to me or my fellow black peers. we were shut down and mistreated horribly. the staff would make us feel dehumanized. please take a big look at all the reviews. do u really want you’re child to experience any of this? please think about it, deeply.

Was a resident in 2019. During this time, I dislocated my knee and was on crutches for a majority of the time I was there. When I was towards the end of my recovery with my knee, I was advocating to stop using my crutches, but was told I was triangulating and was put on red. Pretty much faked it till I got out. Hated the therapist I had. Tried telling me I could stop my seizures months in advance by using skills. Wouldn’t properly care for me when I would have medical emergencies. It would take them an hour to get my asthma medication when having an attack. Don’t send your kid here especially if they also have other complex medical conditions along with needing mental health care.

It's not perfect but there's a much better team for admin/clinical and more structure and support for residents than before. A lot of things have been updated to actually be trauma-informed support and helping build a voice for the residents.

I was at Avanti in 2011 for 9 months and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was a very long time ago, but based on other reviews it looks like it hasn’t changed much besides them apparently becoming desperate enough to start hiring men instead of only female staff which if true, is completely unacceptable and a massive issue. It’s my opinion that they would accept nearly anyone that was referred to the program regardless of past interventions. Mild depression with no history of suicide attempts? Accepted; estimated length of stay 6-9 months. Basically any teenager with any mental health diagnosis at all with pushy parents was likely to be admitted. And once admitted, they’re held to impossibly high standards that even mentally stable, well adjusted teenagers with minimal trauma would have difficulty maintaining. Hell, even fully grown adults would struggle in an environment like this. If you have any slightly unhealthy but harmless coping mechanisms you will be criticized and punished in lieu of any outwardly destructive or violent behavior. The goalposts were always shifting, there was always something to be criticized even when attempting to comply to their demands. Because as it turns out, teens and kids of this age are not perfect. They can not follow every rule perfectly 100% of the time, mental illness aside. The staff that we spent most of our time with were called “counselors” but they were undertrained and were basically underpaid babysitters. Some of which seemed to enjoy the little power they had by forcing residents to comply with arbitrary demands, not because there was any therapeutic purpose to it, but just because they could and they enjoyed having authority. I think a lot of girls, myself included, left this place with more trauma than they had to begin with. Immediately after leaving I was startled by loud noises for months thinking that some kind of crisis was happening. The effects of a teenager leaving their friend group and school environment for 6-9 months is detrimental. I was set back in school basically ever since going here because the on the on grounds school was inadequate. Don’t send your kids here. Don’t send your kids to residential treatment unless as a very very last resort.

I made it to stage 4, but I was just as miserable and just as abused as everyone else. I believe the only reason I got stage 4 is because I started to isolate myself which meant I stopped advocating for other people and myself. I came into Avanti outspoken and morally strong but I left broken and quiet. They don’t want you to have a voice and make you think you are nothing more than your struggles. They lie on treatment plans so “insurance doesn’t stop paying” but really it’s because they make money off of children’s pain. A few staff quit because of the way we were treated but they didn’t report the abuse to anyone. They failed us just as much as the owner of avanti. I left twice as traumatized then when I went it. I’m still trying to find my voice again 4 years later. I could write a 500 page paper on everything I went through at 6 months in avanti. Please do not send your children here, and I’m so sorry to anyone who is reading this after staying at avanti. I talk to 3 people I met there 4 years ago and we all still regularly recall the things that happened to us at avanti. What avanti does to children will never be legal or morally okay. Every single mental health professional I’ve told this year that I went to Avanti gets a look on their face or says something negative about it. This place is so scary, I don’t understand why no one has done anything.

I’ve been waiting to make this review… THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE! & that is a understatement.. If you have any love for your child DO NOT send her here. Please. This place is disgusting, traumatizing, and belittling. I was at avanti for a little over 5 months, somewhat close to discharge because the programs stay was an estimated 6-8 months I believe. They kicked me out after residents threw a huge crisis… every crisis was blamed on me. EVERY CRISIS!!!!!! I swear they were racist. They favorited certain residents and didn’t give a single crap about the rest. Therapists were absolutely terrible and so were the staff. All the people you were supposed to confide in with your struggles there were unreliable, rude, and negative. Residents got one 10 minute phone call a day which was never guaranteed because of crisis and staff being lazy. Which made things lot harder for me. It was hard enough being away from home but barely getting the opportunity to speak to my support system made things a lot more difficult. The handbook was NEVER followed ,rights were never respected. I spent most of my stay in a place we call fireside (which was a room we got sent to when there was a crisis for safety) then I did learning skills to get myself better to have the ability to discharge home. I could go on for DAYS about this place and how messed up it was. I came out with more trauma then I went in with. If I could give this place a negative star review I would. x1000. SHUT THIS PLACE DOWN!!!!!! I’m now an adult. & have learned to live with what this place did to me mentally. I graduated high school and plan on going to college to major in criminal justice & minor in political science eventually. I WANT TO ADVOCATE! I am living in my own apartment, working 16 hour shifts, driving, and I’m expecting a baby boy in March. I hope every Avanti staff sees this review .. & remembers the vulnerable 16 year old girl that they traumatized and belittled. I hope the girls who were also sent here have found peace and got the help they were looking for. SHUT THIS PLACE DOWN!!

I do not recommend sending your child here. I attended for six months in 2023 and I am still unpacking the trauma this place left me with. For me the most damaging part of this program was that you only get a 10 minute phone call you get per day, if even. That 10 minute phone call was closely monitored by staff counting down the time or even ending it if you went over time or said something "wrong". Residential is scary already but barely getting to talk to your family and support systems makes it even harder and lonelier. Most of my six months I spent the evenings going back and forth from the main building where we slept and the other building that had a place called fireside. Fireside was where we went if a resident has having a "crisis", however there was many times where we "couldn't" move and we just had to close our bedroom doors and listen to the banning, screaming, and sometimes witness the restraints they put residents in. It would sometimes take hours for staff to get a hold of the situations or for police/EMTs to arrive. We would be out till midnight in the winter going back and forth, it even got so bad we had to spend the night at fireside where all of us had to sleep on the floor. And then the next day we would go to school tired like nothing happened, we weren't allowed to talk about the situations as a group even if they brought up painful and scary feelings or memories. I am currently 18 and doing much better but I still have nights where Im back in that room holding my roommates as we cried during the crisis's. I still to this day believe talking to my parents more would have helped me feel less lonely and afraid.

If I could give this review zero stars, I would. My stay at Avanti was only two months due to my parents making the decision to pull me from the program. ( I think the typical stay is 5-9 months) They had given another girl my medication and then didn’t give me any, and they would not send the right medications with me during passes. Not only did they mess up my medications, but they did not listen to anything I had to say. One girl that was there would call me names and yell cuss words at me. My one on one therapist told me, “if you get your parents to pull you from our program, you’re just going to go home and end up killing yourself”. All of the doors used to exit the buildings are always unlocked from the inside, meaning multiple girls would run. Every time someone would run we would all sit in the “fire side” until they were sustained and calm. You get one phone call a day, for only 10 minutes, and sometimes when we had to go to the fire side, we didn’t get to make phone calls to our families. On top of everything I’ve already listed, we would sleep on thin gym mats, like the ones they use in elementary school. Lots of drama, bullying, and racism. Not a good place to go if you’re looking for your child to get the help they need.