Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CALO - Change Academy at Lake of the Ozarks

Why the bashing? What is an alternative?

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Anon64:
The Surgeon General says these places don't work: http://http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/chapter3/sec7.html. Why would you need any other reason to stop wasting your money than knowing they have no evidence of success and plenty of evidence of causing more harm, up to and including death, in the people forced into them?

studentsmom:
Wow... interesting assumption that I'm the problem.  I am a healthy, stable adult with two other healthy, stable children.  I have attended therapies with my troubled daughter as much as her treatment teams have asked, and have been told by 4 different hospitals, two psychiatrists, and 3 therapists that I'm "doing everything right".

Even if there are things in the family dynamic that will help, those things take time and my child is at risk now.  

The article reference does indeed state that there is little evidence that RTC in the aggregate is effective, and then cites violent teens as those least likely to benefit.  My child needs 24/7 care as a threat to herself.  Inpatient hospitals (cited by the article as possible interventions) have repeatedly told my she needs residential treatment, that they cannot give her the care she really needs.

So folks on this forum assume the mother is to blame for a mental illness?  I will follow your logic... I am open to saying I am an imperfect human being and have made some mistakes.  At this point, however, my child's issues are an immediate threat.  Any treatment takes time to affect change.  So even if my parenting is at the root of some of her issues, she still needs to recover from how she now processes the world, interprets events, and how she views herself.  Changing me at this point, while it may be beneficial, does not address how she can change her.

You ask about taking her from school and the effect that has... and I think you have a valid point.  However, removing her from the primary school setting was not my choice to begin with, as the school could not manage her behavior problems and was sending her home several times a week.  Her grades were suffering as a result.  I am trying to keep her options open for her future.

The responses I see here sound to me to come from adolescents themselves who believe they understand parenting.  Don’t assign chores as punishment, I’m told.  I totally agree.  I do not believe in “punishment” either.
I do believe, however, that I have a duty as a parent to provide a consequence to my daughter for poor choices in preparation for the fact that the world has natural consequences, and she needs to learn that consequences come from choices.  This is the context under which I have assigned chores.  This is how I have explained it to my daughter.  If I do not teach her cause and effect, she will experience it outside the home in a much more severe way and I will not have fulfilled my responsibility as a parent to teach my child.

Pile of Dead Kids:
Sending your daughter to CALO for self-harm issues is like using hydrochloric acid as zit cream.

heretik:

Not to be mean but I would have to agree with the GateKeeper here.

Obviously you have not done enough investigation to know 98% of the programs in America and outside are not worth a flip. Your child is not going to come home all better, well adjusted, character flaws corrected, personality in check ect........
Parenting is hard work sometimes, not all children are easy. I have not heard you really elaborate on what is your part in all of this. As parents how have you faltered, have your efforts been based upon shifting the blame and trying to get someone or something else to take care of the problem. Is their a problem with the child, are you two the problem or is the family structure the problem. IDK......
Just think about this if you would, the parents have to be involved 100% for the child. Sending your child away is not being 100% involved.
Good luck and please think about your child first.

treatmentkid:
As a former CALO student, I agree with some things that have been said on this thread, and disagree with others. I think that CALO is a treatment center with good intentions, but awful execution. There are a lot of things that go on that you probably don't know, but part of CALO's "thing" is this underlying emotional manipulation that you don't realize until after you're gone. They mold your mind - make you think differently, not necessarily in positive ways. You become a parrot.

I think that for actual, physical dangers - like self harm - CALO can help, in that it can physically stop you from self harming. However, that's honestly not a tough thing to do. Emotionally, CALO is quite lacking. I don't have much time to go into detail, but there has been a pattern at CALO of students doing phenomenally well (seemingly) before and when they leave, and slipping deeper than before they arrived as time goes on. However, CALO doesn't track long-term effects. If it does, it does not make widespread results open to the public.

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