Every year, around 50,000 teenagers are forced into what is known as “The Troubled Teen Industry”. The Troubled Teen Industry is comprised of wilderness programs, boot camps, boarding schools, military schools, behavior modification programs, and residential treatment centers. They are all privately owned and for-profit companies, and most are owned by the same company; Universal Health Services. Universal Health Services has a long-standing history of mistreatment and abuse. It is currently legal in many states for parents to sign over their parental rights to these programs and then staff can legally kidnap the child in the middle of the night and take them to some of these programs. The treatment the teens face in these facilities is abuse. At the facility I was in, Sandy Pines Hospital in Tequesta, Florida, we were denied shampoo and body wash because it was a privilege and were forced to use a Dixie cup of orange Dial dish soap to wash our hair, clothes, and body. We had zero privacy at all times. Staff would watch us through the cameras in our rooms and even watch some patients use the restroom and shower. They even listened to our phone calls and read and took our mail.  Punishments included being forced to sit on the wall in silence for hours to days on end. I witnessed multiple patients being restrained in unsafe ways and dragged into a room called “the back”. The majority of us were forced onto heavy doses of a tranquillizing antipsychotic known as Seroquel. If we refused our medication, we were punished. I witnessed my friend trying to kill herself without any care from the staff. A different friend swallowed a battery with another patient because of the neglect from staff. In many programs, medical needs are denied with the claim that the child just wants to leave and is faking it. Some programs punish the kids by tying them to staff members, tying them to animals, striking them, denying them school, denying them food, and forcing them to do heavy manual labor. Hundreds of kids have died at the hands of the troubled teen industry and this needs to be stopped. This is an issue that has gotten worse over time and will continue to get worse if nothing is done about it. Please sign my petition to support putting regulations in place at these programs in my home state of Florida. My goal is to reach 500 signatures and take this to the Florida Senate to show that change is needed. Many of these programs need to be shut down, and when they are, they just reopen with a new name. Laws and regulations need to be put in place to stop the institutional abuse and deaths of children.