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The Shadow Mountain Behavioral Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma is under investigation by the Department of Human Services over alleged repeated abuse and neglect of children in their facilities.

Shadow Mountain's practices have come under scrutiny as videos from their facility's surveillance cameras have surfaced. The investigation revolves around several counts of abuse and neglect of children in the facility and violation of state laws which include unnecessary use of force when restraining patients, medication errors, understaffing, inadequate staffing, and questionable practices in admission of patients, Tulsa World reported.

The experts who viewed the videos were appalled at the way the director of the Shadow Mountain facility Mike Kistler, handled seemingly volatile patients. State laws prohibit use of excessive force or certain holds because such practices can lead to suffocation while use of detention rooms should only be used when the patient is a danger to himself or to others and can only be used as a last resort. But in one of the surveillance videos, it was seen that Kistler took over in instances where patients were already successfully restrained by facility employees. He grabs the patient's arms and proceeds to throw him into a seclusion room, as reported by BuzzFeed News who first broke the news.

The footage showed the young patient hitting himself on the head while Kistler stood by the door and chatted with a staff member. Wanda Mohr, an expert on use of restraints in behavioral facilities, explained that this would have been a good time to use the restraint on the boy. That same boy tried to run out of the seclusion room but Kistler, a former high school wrestler, holds the boy to the ground and pins his arms back and wraps one of his legs around the child.

Because of state laws, the DHS cannot confirm if they are investigating the facility in this matter on the videos related to abuse and neglect of children but have confirmed they are conducting investigations on other violations of the facility. The organization who runs the facility maintain that the videos cannot be judged without knowing the histories of the cases in the facility and none of the patients shown in the video suffered bodily harm.