Youth recovery center creating detox facility for troubled youth
David Burke is the director of facilities and programming at Serenity Mesa Youth Recover Center. He tells KOAT when it comes to care for youth dealing with substance and alcohol addiction
By Julian Paras
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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — David Burke is the director of facilities and programming at Serenity Mesa Youth Recover Center. He tells KOAT when it comes to care for youth dealing with substance and alcohol addiction, there aren’t many options to help them.
“Five, six years ago, our average was 17, 18. Now it’s 14, 15,” Burke said. Those are the average ages of children dealing with addiction they treat.
“You can go to the hospital, but there’s really no true in-patient youth detox in the state,” Burke said.
But in a few months, Burke says that will change with Serenity Mesa offering a center to help teens who suffer from these issues. Other child advocates say action like this is necessary to help New Mexico’s youth in crisis.
“Expanding behavioral health services, expanding provider opportunities, more beds especially for our youth in crisis is probably one of the most important things that we are going to see happen this year,” Maralyn Beck with Child First Network said.
Burke says this is what youth can expect to receive when the detox center opens.
“We’ll be able to provide medical staff, medical oversight, have medication for the kids that are detoxing,” Burke said.
Advocates wish more could have been done during this year’s legislative session to highlight a lack of resources for children in crisis, but say Serenity Mesa is leading the way to put these efforts on everyone’s radar.
“Serenity Mesa is a perfect example of doing the important work we need to do while building back up our behavioral health care system,” Beck said.
Burke believes this work can pay off in bunches moving forward.
“So I’m hoping that opening up a detox will help open up the door to more conversations about mental health, more conversations about substance abuse, and how do we help our kids?” Burke said.
The detox facility should be finished by the end of February. Serenity Mesa is working to get licensing for the facility from the state.
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