This becomes the problem. They show the research and it looks good because your not trained to ask the right questions about the research. This is what makes trying to choose one of these places dangerous.
While doing my reasearch I came across a sight by a Dr. Connor. He stated emphatically that wilderness therapy works! He stated it like it was a consensus. Furthermore he was running a non profit institute, The Mentor Institute. But when you actually looked at the research it was laughable. The nonprofit was just a cover to legitamize industry marketing. Even their own spokesperson Dr. Behrens,admits that is a dearth of outcome research. There is nothing using another therapuetic modality as a control group. If the treatment works, why after decades, is their no evidence? Believe me, it is not that hard to come up with a decent research design. I'll bet they didn't mention anything about the surgeon general's report which concluded that based on the current evidence, residential treatment wasn't effective. If your child wasn't that screwed up why not try family therapy? Did you get an indepenedent psyc evaluation which recommended this? For the money you are paying to send him away you could hire his favorite counselor there to be your childs full time companion, plus a full time teacher. Or hire a full time pschologist. Or a full time MSW plus plenty of tutoring. Help him discover his inner child or other disguarded new age theories while you work on your communication skills with him at home.
With teen agers the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs impulse control is still inmature. It won't be fully developed unil the early to mid twenties. When an artificial environment is used to control their physical environment and psychological developement, they lose the benefits of the natural maturation proccess. They feel more angry depressed and confused when they find out that there is a disconnect between the milieu they were in and pragmatic application.These evironments don't help them internalize controls but usually retards them. In short it doesn't work for them because they been taught a system of relating to the world which does not account for the uniquness of their individuality. Their jouney through life has been hijacked by pirates.
What these schools do is run a very sophisticated con game. They pass off satisfaction surveys and parent testimonials as evidence of methodological correctness. They use behavior questionairs and sell them as diagnostic tools. These behavior surveys are nothing more than a cruel form of advertisement. They are fishing for a certain type of kid. They are looking for the pain the ass, inmature, drug abusing, minor anger management types. The type of kid who can be easily treated in a community setting. The prey on gullable parents unfamiliar with mental health research and protocal. Their favorite targets are parents unfamiliar with normative teen behavior. When ,in fact, most of this teenage bullshit disappears with age as longistudinal studies suggest. Normal life situations, college, girlfreinds, moving out of the family system in a normal way, jobs, the birth of their own children, more experience in making choices, brain development, heavily conspire to bring sanity. The top dawg of the child world will soon be the bottom dawg of the adult world. And with that a whole new set of adaptive behaviours.
These TBS's are absolutely seriously damaging for a whole host of conditions they claim to treat. These include depression, ADD/HD, Mental illnesses that require psychiatric supervision and medication. And although most of the staffs are well intentioned, they are undereducated, and undertrained. Even the staff with masters levels (from real universities) are unexperienced with other modalities of treatment and buy into the program as a result of ignorance.
Before you decide to keep your kid at Carlbrook do the proper due diligance and get an opinion from a competent independent mental health professionals who have examined your child. Let them interpret for you evidence.
