Beverly Froslie Johnson, a South Dakota parent and children’s mental health advocate, recounted the pain of her son Nicholas being transported to Copper Hills, a psychiatric residential treatment facility in Utah. “The image remains with me today,” she wrote of watching two staff members escort her son from his home. “I can’t imagine what was going through his mind or how terrified he must have felt.”
Before Copper Hills, Nicholas had been hospitalized seven times at Avera Behavioral Health Hospital, experienced three long stays at South Dakota’s HSC (Human Services Center), once at Mayo Clinic, and had two mental health holds at the Juvenile Detention Center. Police encounters ranged from de-escalation to concerning force—one incident where officers pinned Nicholas “face-down to the point where he couldn’t breathe” and another where they arrived “with Tasers pointed at him.”
Nicholas has autism, PTSD, and other mental illnesses that do not define his character. He is “loving, kind, caring, smart, funny, helpful and worth fighting for.” Mental illness carries stigma that Johnson hopes to dispel through factual information. “I don’t want people avoiding Nicholas because they assume he could be unstable, violent or dangerous. That is not the case.”
South Dakota spends $10 million annually sending children out-of-state for psychiatric residential treatment. Johnson emphasized the cost and hardship: “But it shouldn’t have been over 1,000 miles away. He should not have been so far from family for a year and a half. It should have been right here at home, in South Dakota.” Johnson’s work with then-state Rep. Linda Duba resulted in House Bill 1302, signed into law in 2022.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/dont-stigmatize-mental-health-sd-needs-a-psychiatric-residential-treatment-facility-in-state