In the hallway outside the classroom, a boy of about 8 sits on the floor, his head curled forward, his body in a tight, submissive crouch. A teacher sits beside him, rubbing his back. There is no conversation between them, just the calming movement of her hand on his back, up and down, up and down.
There is nothing random about what’s happening at Mount St. Vincent Home. That back rub is essential treatment. That back rub could save the boy’s life.
It’s just one of many techniques to treat a young brain whose development has been altered by early childhood trauma.
Mount St. Vincent Home was begun as an orphanage 123 years ago by six Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kan. Over the years, thousands of children who were orphaned or relinquished by their parents found a home on the sprawling, pretty campus in northwest Denver.
Now the renovated 1905 building and several newer ones have been transformed into homes, schools and treatment facilities for children who have been abused, neglected or afflicted with serious mental illness.
For many of the children ages 3 to 16, this is their last chance at a decent life.
Dennis Kennedy, director of development at Mount St. Vincent, said many of the children arrive after being abandoned by dysfunctional families, expelled from schools, shuffled from foster home to foster home and declared too difficult to manage by counselors, teachers and therapists.
Others arrive from stable families who seek help treating children with serious conditions such as psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder or other mental illnesses.
All of them get intense attention, instruction and therapy, including state-of-the-art treatments – such as back rubs.
“There used to be a lot more emphasis on behavior modification treatments,” Kennedy explained. This meant the approach was to focus on the consequences of behavior. Good behavior was rewarded; bad behavior resulted in loss of privileges.
But research on brain development in recent years has led to a dramatic change in treatment protocols.
“When a child experiences lots of chaos and trauma in the first four years of life, you can’t talk him through that,” Kennedy said. You can’t expect him to modify his behavior because the child’s response is not coming from the cognitive level. It’s a product of the brainstem or the midbrain, which have been affected by the child’s earliest experiences.
So treatment must be directed toward calming those basic brain responses before any kind of behavioral change can be expected.
That’s why massage, therapeutic touch, drumming and other techniques are used to stabilize a child and help him heal.
In some ways, Kennedy said, treating mentally ill children is easier than helping abused kids.
“For one thing,” he explained, “it’s nobody’s fault. The child may be frustrated, sad, lost or acting out, but the causes are internal factors, not external ones.”
Often drug therapy is successful for them, and, once the child is stabilized, he often can return to his family.
For abused children, Kennedy said, drug treatments usually “only take the edge off” their problems. The children still need intensive therapy to recover from their injuries.
When they do, they move on to be adopted, placed in foster homes or transition into group homes for teens.
While care at Mount St. Vincent Home is sophisticated and compassionate, it isn’t cheap. Costs range from about $25,000 to $60,000 a year per child.
That covers 24-hour-a-day care, classrooms with one full-time teacher and one full-time behavior therapist for every 12 children, plus a crisis intervention team. Families also receive therapy; psychiatrists meet with the children regularly; and counselors work closely with everyone.
Nearly 80 percent of the budget for Mount St. Vincent is covered by counties and school districts from across Colorado who send children there for treatment. The rest of the budget – between $1 million and $1.5 million per year – comes from donors and grants from organizations such as the Post-News Season to Share program.
“Success for a child here is safety, security, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, developing the ability to learn,” Kennedy said.
“We try to achieve a level of calmness in children who have never known that in their lives. Maybe most important, the children come to feel at home here.
“Sometimes for the first time in their lives, they can relax,” he said.
It starts with a back rub.
Diane Carman’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: dcarman@denverpost.com