By Meg Wingerter
Copyright denverpost
A Virginia family is suing the Eating Recovery Center over what they allege was a failure to prevent patients from harming themselves during their daughter’s treatment at a facility in Denver.
Jerry and Rebecca Music and their now-adult daughter, Allison Music, sued the Eating Recovery Center and 29 executives, physicians and other staff members in Denver District Court on Sunday.
They alleged the providers didn’t respond appropriately when Allison voiced thoughts of suicide or nonfatal self-harm, and forced her to witness other patients hurting themselves or attempting suicide.
Eating Recovery Center representatives didn’t immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit on Monday afternoon.
Allison, then 16, entered the partial hospitalization program at the center’s Spruce Street location in April 2023, according to the lawsuit. That location has stopped treating patients with eating disorders and now takes children and teens with anxiety and mood disorders.
ERC owns one other location in the Denver area that treat minors and two that treat adults, which have helped make Colorado a destination for eating disorder care.
About a month after she started treatment, Allison voiced a desire to die by suicide, leading her mother to conclude Allison wouldn’t be safe in the rented home where they were staying. She transitioned into the full residential program, but ERC didn’t include any enhanced monitoring in her care plan, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleged Allison received only seven individual therapy sessions over five months, because the facility treated therapy as a privilege, and received no treatment for traumatic events in her history. The family also alleged other practices they considered degrading, including requiring Allison to eat food off the floor, denying bathroom visits and making patients get weighed while naked.
Other ex-patients reported similar practices to The Denver Post that they said worsened their trauma. Representatives for ERC previously told The Post that patients with eating disorders face a high risk of death, making unpleasant practices like force-feeding or monitoring in the bathroom necessary in some cases.
Allison repeatedly reported thoughts about dying or harming herself in a nonfatal way in the weeks after starting residential treatment. According to the lawsuit, her suicidal thoughts escalated in June 2023 after another patient attempted to strangle herself and staff failed to intervene, even as the unnamed patient turned blue. Staff also allegedly told patients not to intervene when others were harming themselves on the unit.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment conducted an inspection of the Spruce Street facility in mid-August 2023, investigating allegations that staff hadn’t responded appropriately to suicide attempts.
The agency found two patients repeatedly tried to die by suicide in June 2023 and that facility leadership opted not to send them elsewhere for mental health treatment, despite staff concerns that they couldn’t keep the patients safe. Leadership said they thought the patients were trying to get out of eating disorder treatment and recommended staff “therapeutically ignore” patients’ self-harming behavior, even if they lost consciousness after wrapping something around their necks.
In an interview in 2023, Dr. Anne Marie O’Melia, ERC’s chief medical officer, told The Post that ignoring the patients violated the facility’s policies, and ERC made changes after the state brought the matter to leaders’ attention.
While ignoring mild misconduct, such as tantrums, can eventually be effective in children’s behavior, experts don’t recommend it for self-harm, because kids will escalate their behavior to try to get the reaction they want before giving up.
Allison continued to express suicidal ideation out loud and in her journal in August and September 2023. Her parents became concerned when they found out later that she had stockpiled socks and underwear, which she could have wrapped around her neck.
ERC discharged her in late September 2023 because she had “disengaged” from treatment. She later attempted suicide, but survived, and has post-traumatic stress disorder from her time in treatment, the lawsuit said.
“Rather than receiving the specialized, compassionate care that was promised, Allison was subjected to punitive treatment approaches, denied appropriate therapy and placed in danger through ERC’s dangerous ‘therapeutic ignoring’ protocol that instructed staff to ignore suicide attempts,” the complaint said.
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