A recovery center for youths in Albuquerque is gearing up to open new housing next month specifically for girls and young women.
The new facility will have room for eight teens and young women ages 14 through 21. It’ll be run by the Serenity Mesa Youth Recovery Center – a transitional housing program that helps residents with addiction and mental health issues.
Madeleine Wilson is the clinical director there.
“Adolescents in mental and behavioral health are often not attended to in the way that adults and younger children are,” she said. “They are sort of the population that gets left behind.”
Right now Serenity Mesa only serves boys and young men. Their average age is 17.
Treatment costs $550 a month, but Wilson said almost every patient has been eligible to get those fees covered so they don’t have to pay out of pocket.
In New Mexico, when you turn 14, you can make your own decisions about mental health and reproductive care. So Serenity Mesa residents don’t need their parents’ OK.
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