Author Topic: Blueprints  (Read 5866 times)

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Offline Hamiltonf

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Re: Blueprints
« Reply #15 on: July 17, 2008, 06:31:44 PM »
And I'll tell you, still interested, that Ajax is not the issue.  AARC is.  It is unscientific, amateur and lacking in any rigorous evaluation processes, peer review or epidemiological analysis.  And I have four degrees, though that is hardly relevant to the discussion.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
uote of the Year
The Bush administration has succeeded in making the United States one of the most feared and hated countries in the world. The talent of these guys is unbelievable. They have even succeeded at alienating Canada. I mean, that takes ge

Offline ajax13

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Re: Blueprints
« Reply #16 on: April 07, 2009, 01:41:00 PM »
Pulling back from the abyss
A private program in Calgary specializes in drug-addicted teens who reject the idea of treatment

Gerry Bellett
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.

CALGARY - When he talks about it today, Lawren Hyde just calls it a knife even though it was really a sharpened machete carried up his sleeve, a symbol of where he was at 17-- drug dealer, addict, violent, dangerous and on the brink of permanent insanity.

The machete was an accessory that came with the paranoia.

And the paranoia arrived when he was 16 and binging on cocaine, ecstacy, crystal meth and PCP -- horse tranquilizers -- in Downtown Eastside after hours clubs often for four days at a time without sleep.

"Shadows frightened me. My friends frightened me. I was convinced people were trying to kill me," said Hyde, now 23.

His widowed mother Valerie was at her wits end. He'd been uncontrollable since the age of 13 and on drugs since nine when his father died.

He'd been kicked out of four schools for dealing drugs, arrested for robbery, and was now raving around their North Vancouver neighbourhood with his machete, slashing at phantoms he believed were gathering to kill him.

Of all the torment his mother felt, the one that burned deepest was her inability to find him help.

If anyone should have been able to do this for him it was her -- after all, she was a psychiatric nurse working for North Shore Addictions and Mental Health Services with all the resources of the province open to her.

But despite the $1 billion a year the B.C. government spends on mental health and substance abuse programs, and all the youth addiction treatment beds throughout the province, none was of any use to Lawren who was going insane from an insatiable appetite for drugs.

"I tried everything to get help. I mean this is my profession and I should know where to get it, but in B.C. there was nothing for him. He needed to be forced into treatment but we don't do that here," she said.

"Treatment in B.C. is voluntary. Kids have to be compliant. There's no recognition that children like Lawren who aren't compliant need a secure environment where they can be treated. We give all the rights to kids and none to parents. So under the guise of human rights, parents can't get their children the help they need.

"Lawren only went for outpatient treatment because he was court ordered. But it never did any good. He needed more than that," she said.

Some therapists were so frightened by him they refused treatment.

SON COULD DIE, DOCTOR SAID

The last time she tried getting help in B.C. was from a Lower Mainland physician specializing in addiction. She told him she was afraid her son would die before he became an adult.

"He said to me 'yes that's quite possible.' That's all the help I could get -- him telling me my son might die. I can't tell you how I felt. I'd already lost my husband, if I lost my son I know I would have died too," she said.

In May 2001 she discovered the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC), a private program in Calgary which treats adolescents in the final stages of addiction when they are facing death or permanent insanity. Unlike programs in B.C., AARC won't reject youths like Lawren who fight treatment.

Most of the kids treated in AARC have been court ordered or placed in treatment by the Alberta Child Welfare Services, and virtually none of them choose to be treated, says AARC executive director Dr. Dean Vause.

"This is not the case with adults who will voluntarily enter treatment. Adolescents won't. None of them want to be here," he said.

Other kids are brought in by parents -- a few kicking and screaming. The Alberta government has secure care legislation that allows minors to be held for five days if deemed to be a danger to themselves or in danger of being exploited for prostitution.

B.C. considered enacting similar legislation in 2000 but the government was frightened off by the anticipated expense and the lack of facilities for holding them.

AARC requires every youth to sign a consent to treatment before being admitted in addition to a consent being granted by the government department or parent responsible.

Valerie was told that if she could get her son to AARC they would do an assessment to see if he qualified for treatment. She knew she would have to trick him into going as he was too violent and unstable to voluntarily enter the centre.

By now his paranoia was so bad that he'd gone into an RCMP detachment believing it the only safe place to make a phone call. His behaviour was so bizarre the officers sent him to hospital where a psychiatrist diagnosed drug-induced psychosis and found he was close to permanent insanity. When he was released from the psychiatric ward his mother convinced him to fly to Winnipeg and stay with an uncle.

Then she lied and said his return ticket would only take him as far as Calgary and offered to meet him there so they could spend the week shopping before returning home.

In Calgary she fashioned a heavy parcel using phone books and told him she had to deliver it.

When she pulled up outside AARC, a nondescript low building in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city, Lawren -- blissfully unaware of what AARC was -- volunteered to carry it in.

"I was trying to be nice," he said.

Inside he was told to go downstairs and in the basement he was surrounded by "eight guys all bigger than me who said I was getting a drug assessment."

Stunned, he was taken into a room where two young, fit, and large males stayed with him. At the time he was over six feet tall and a martial arts devotee and weighed about 160 pounds.

CONSENT FORM SIGNED

Vause remembers the admission.

"Lawren was a really sick kid and he didn't want to be here but we talked to him and he did sign the consent for assessment and treatment," said Vause.

"Sometimes you have to step in front of a kid that sick, although the risks for us as an organization are great because we don't want to leave ourselves open to accusations of unlawful confinement. That's why we require them to sign a consent."

Lawren remembers that if he had had a weapon that afternoon he would likely have used it.

"I didn't have my knife and I was dealing with guys a lot bigger than me.

"They took away my money, my jewelry, told me to take a shower to get deloused, took away all my fancy clothes and gave me the plain clothes my mother had brought in," he said.

He was escorted upstairs and placed with a group of other youths undergoing treatment. He spent the night at an AARC host home operated by the parents of a client nearing the end of treatment.

For company he was assigned the same husky youths that he believed he'd have to fight if he attempted to escape.

"I thought about it but I was in a strange city, the house was locked and secure I had no money, would have to fight my way out and even if I did I'd have to rob someone and then try to get back home," he said.

He decided to sit tight and see what happened. It took two weeks before he realized he was being helped.

"I guess I began listening to Dr. Vause I liked the way he held himself."

Meanwhile, his mother had flown back to North Vancouver, arranged a leave of absence, closed up the family home and moved to Calgary with his sister as the program requires parents to live near the centre.

Ten months later Lawren emerged from treatment and has been clean and sober since.

"AARC saved him as it saved me and his sister," says his mother. "We'd lived our lives around his addiction. My love didn't stand a chance next to the hold drugs had on him. He loved me, I know that, but he loved his addiction more -- much, much more -- they all do."

DRUG BLITZ PLANNED

Last November Valerie was back in Calgary, part of a handpicked group contemplating an ambitious addiction intervention campaign for British Columbia. Addiction and medical experts -- with observers from the B.C. government and a number of aboriginal bands -- were gathered here to plan a community-wide blitz on drug abuse that will be directed at oil-and-gas-rich Fort St. John and the aboriginal communities surrounding it.

At first sight it appeared unusual that 75 people -- among them business and community leaders of this wealthy Alberta city -- would give up four days of their valuable time planning to save children in northeast B.C. from drug and alcohol addiction.

But the initiative is being driven by Allan Markin, the chairman of Canadian Natural Resources.

Markin -- one of the owners of the Calgary Flames and an unabashed philanthropist -- has offered to put $3 million into the project.

Markin's company is the second largest gas and oil producer in Canada. The Fort St. John area accounts for a large part of his company's holdings and hundreds of local people are directly employed by Canadian Natural Resources or work under contract. Therefore it's no surprise that when Markin looked at the map of British Columbia for an area to help he stuck a pin in the north east.

Markin wants to help communities deal with addiction "so that in 10 years from now they will be better places" and asked AARC to become involved because of the centre's effectiveness.

He has held talks with the B.C. government and believes he has a promise from Victoria that his money would be matched.

"They've promised that and I believe they'll do as they've said," Markin said.

That might be a bit hopeful as the B.C. government has yet to commit a penny. Whether the government's involved or not, the participants in the meeting set themselves the ambitious goal of blanketing the Fort St. John region -- schools, churches, industry, police, the courts, service clubs, aboriginal governments, municipal governments -- with the message that addiction is a disease of the brain and communities need to do more than just rely on the old 'just say no' campaign as this has never worked anywhere with adolescents.

"Addiction's a complex illness and there are no quick fixes. But we believe community intervention can be effective in keeping kids healthy," said Vause.

"Prevention is a million times better than treatment and we'll be glad to be involved in an intervention program in B.C. because no one wants to see kids come here for treatment," he said.

Vause said AARC would likely open an office in Fort St. John either with permanent staff or with personnel rotated in on two-week stints to organize the community prevention part of the campaign.

But there won't be any treatment in Fort St. John although some of the most severely addicted children could be offered treatment in Calgary.

This will cost about $100,000 per family, the money being split between treatment fees and living expenses as at least one parent will have to move to Calgary and set up home in order the meet the demands of the program.

Markin is prepared to finance five B.C. families a year for five years. If the B.C. government matches his contribution, 10 B.C. families a year could be helped.

In recent years the B.C. government has sent deputy ministers and politicians to this non-profit centre to gather intelligence. The government appears fascinated by the centre's results, which are impressive, but skittish of its methods which are abstinence based, hard-nosed and nothing like the voluntary programs available in B.C.

The interest in AARC began with the former B.C. New Democrat Party government which promised $1 million to start an AARC program in the Lower Mainland, but nothing came of it.

Now the B.C. Liberals are sizing up AARC to see if the program could be brought into the province as part of the Aboriginal Health Plan which calls for an increase in addiction treatment.

Treatment is based on the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. ARRC was founded by Vause in 1992.

A 2005 survey by U.S.-based evaluator Dr. Michael Quinn Patton tracked the condition of 100 consecutive AARC graduates who had been treated between January 1998 and January 2002 and found 85 per cent of them sober and drug-free at the time of interview.

Some reported a relapse after treatment but had regained sobriety after returning to the centre for further counselling. However, 48 per cent had never used alcohol or drugs after leaving AARC.

During this four-year period, 15 youths had quit the program or were terminated by AARC staff or referred to another institution, a drop-out rate of about four a year.

Since 1992 the centre has graduated 332 youths, a significant number from B.C.

GOVERNMENT INTERESTED

Health Minister George Abbott admitted the government was interested in the AARC program.

"We have not formed conclusions on that program yet. I think it has enough positive results that it's important we look at it and see whether on a pilot project basis we ought to look at something like it," Abbott said.

"We spend over a billion dollars now on mental health and addictions programs. We frequently hear we should be doing more, and different and better. But while everyone agrees there should be progress not everyone agrees there should be change," he said.

"We will look carefully at that program and look carefully at other programs out of Alberta as well. There are also programs in Quebec and Ontario," said the minister.

He admitted there was no treatment centre in B.C. that would admit adolescents [such as Lawren] who were violently opposed to being treated.

The issue of whether severely addicted youth in the final stages of illness should be forced into treatment was something that still needed to be confronted, he says.

"That's an important issue and that's something that as a society and government we will have to grapple with -- whether one can treat those who are resistant to treatment?"

Asked if the government was planning to bring in any type of secure care legislation that might allow it to happen, he says it might be something for the future.

"I recall the debate when the NDP was looking at it. The Secure Care Act was controversial at the time particularly among those in the human rights area. It remains an important issue but it's not one that's going to be a part of legislative agenda in an immediate sense," he said.

Demands for treatment at AARC from parents in other parts of Canada and Alberta has been so intense that a new $6-million addition to the facility, allowing it to treat up to 60 children.

[email protected]
? The Vancouver Sun 2007


It's always interesting to look back on this article, as it is the most complete example of the absolute bullshit used to peddle AARC for the last twenty years or so.
Let's take it from the top.
-M. Goodale claims that young Lawren was using drugs from the age of 9.  How grossly negligent is the mother whose 9-year-old is unsupervised to the extent that they get access to drugs, experiment with them, and continue using drugs for the next eight years?  Since this child is purported to have been on drugs since the age of nine, but only became uncontrollable at 13, did he spend four years responsibly using drugs in elementary school?
-Lawren was going insane from an insatiable appetite for drugs?  His appetite made him insane?  This would lead to poor prospects at AARC, since AARC preaches that the addiction is lifelong and progressive.  According to this logic, the lifelong nature of the appetite for drugs would have made Lawren insane, rendering the treatment useless.
-Lawren needed a secure facility.  AARC is anything but secure.  The supervising Peer Counselors are completely untrained, and are not correctional officers.  Nor are the clinical counselors.  
-Some therapists were so frightened of Lawren that he was refused treatment.  Yet he was put in a completely unsecure facility with girls as young as twelve.
-Son could die.  So could anyone.
-According to sack-of-shit Bellet AARC treats adolescents in the final stages of addiction when they are facing death or permanent insanity.  According to the Wiz, Rachel O'Neil was borderline, so he kept her for five months.  Borderline does not, at least in my view, constitute facing death or permanent insanity.  Since the AARC clients are generally diagnosed with addiction to marijuana or alcohol, this is indeed a truly bullshit statement.   If these people are facing death and insanity from alcohol use, AARC is not in any way suited to treat this.  Such heavy alcohol use would result in permanent brain damage, and other co-morbidity such as pancreatitis and cirrhosis.  When was the last time you saw a thirteen-year-old with cirrhosis and pancreatitis?   So it's marijuana that is driving them insane and killing the kids?  
-Most of the kids have been court ordered or placed in treatment by child welfare?  Absolute lie.
-Back to Lawren.  This kid is, according to the article, is absolutely nuts and violent.  He's been on drugs according to his mother since age 9.  And in ten months he's a well-adjusted young fellow, fit to hang out with your daughter.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
"AARC will go on serving youth and families as long as it will be needed, if it keeps open to God for inspiration" Dr. F. Dean Vause Executive Director


MR. NELSON: Mr. Speaker, AADAC has been involved with
assistance in developing the program of the Alberta Adolescent
Recovery Centre since its inception originally as Kids of the
Canadian West."
Alberta Hansard, March 24, 1992

Offline psy

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Re: Blueprints
« Reply #17 on: April 07, 2009, 02:23:01 PM »
I would wager that kid wasn't actually as bad as the article claimed, and even if he was, it hardly indicates he somehow had an uncurable progressive and fatal disease.  I knew a kid in college who did crystal meth to excess to the point where he stayed up for weeks.  He would hallucinate as well from the sleep deprivation and became paranoid...  but he quit.  On his own...  just like that...  Something happened that made him think "ok... i'm done with this" and he stopped.  No AA, nothing.  He's still doing fine, holds a good job with a good company, and is advancing in his career.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
Benchmark Young Adult School - bad place [archive.org link]
Sue Scheff Truth - Blog on Sue Scheff
"Our services are free; we do not make a profit. Parents of troubled teens ourselves, PURE strives to create a safe haven of truth and reality." - Sue Scheff - August 13th, 2007 (fukkin surreal)

Offline Anonymous

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Re: Blueprints
« Reply #18 on: April 07, 2009, 02:55:47 PM »
Quote from: "psy"
I would wager that kid wasn't actually as bad as the article claimed, and even if he was, it hardly indicates he somehow had an uncurable progressive and fatal disease.  I knew a kid in college who did crystal meth to excess to the point where he stayed up for weeks.  He would hallucinate as well from the sleep deprivation and became paranoid...  but he quit.  On his own...  just like that...  Something happened that made him think "ok... i'm done with this" and he stopped.  No AA, nothing.  He's still doing fine, holds a good job with a good company, and is advancing in his career. And you want to know something? That kid, was me.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline ajax13

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Re: Blueprints
« Reply #19 on: March 30, 2018, 01:36:27 PM »
Bump.
"AARC will go on serving youth and families as long as it will be needed, if it keeps open to God for inspiration" Dr. F. Dean Vause Executive Director


MR. NELSON: Mr. Speaker, AADAC has been involved with
assistance in developing the program of the Alberta Adolescent
Recovery Centre since its inception originally as Kids of the
Canadian West."
Alberta Hansard, March 24, 1992