Do they treat teens in mental health hospitals?

My friend's 12 year old has been in a facility for over 2 weeks after threatening suicide. He has ADHD (and I know it's over-diagnosed but I truly think he does) and was already on medication. Now he's been to group therapy and is on 3 medications! Do they treat teens or just medicate and talk? They have started to release him 2 or 3 times and then he pitches a fit and they sedate him. How is this helping?

There are good psychiatric hospitals that have an adolescent wing.

It doesn't. What they do is drug you up so you can't cause any trouble, and then they pretty much just talk to you. It's all about the medication now. They don't even really bother finding the root cause.
Medication and talking is treatment. Medication dosages take a while to get adjusted so the fits you describe are likely until the right dosage is found. It is helping to find the right dosage which will help him not to have fits once the right dose is found. Unfortunately, different people react differently to medicine so trial and error is the only way to determine which drug and how much each individual person should take
Social worker with 18 yrs of experience and currently working with children many of whom are ADD and ADHD
They do treat teens at mental health facilities. Unfortuneatly it is impossible to correctly diagnose most mental illness in teenagers as true mental illness until the age of 18 or post puberty. If the medications are helping , than that's a good thing . Talking is an evaluation tool and also helpful for your friend. Mental illness is serious and unfortuneatly can't be "cured" in all cases , just managed. Be patient and supportive , but also encourage your friend to stick with the program and not encourage any negative thoughts about treatment. Be positive and help him/her be positive too.
It's not like you can just treat mental health issues like a disease. The person has to want to get better, you can't force them because it's their mind. What they're really doing is just stopping him from killing himself. That's mostly what hospitals do, restrain people if they think they'll harm themselves or others. In fact that's the criteria for being able to hold someone.... They'll try to treat him but it isn't always possible, you can't just change someone's personality against their will.
They do treat teens however some places are different than others. Sedation is dealt out when he gets out of control to the point of injuring himself or others. They don't normally sedate for ADHD sounds like there is more going on there than just ADHD. they also don't hospitalize you for weeks at a time for ADHD. Based on what you have said... my guess is the sedation is because he has become increasingly threatening to either himself or others.. and being that he did threaten suicide my guess is they are not taking that threat lightly.
Keep in mind there are many laws in place on sedation... there must be alot of documentation done on why they sedated him. don't just listen to what he tells you ... try to get a copy of his chart... it will tell you every thing about what they are doing and why. Problem is only his parents or guardian can get it