On 2004-06-16 23:10:00, Dolphin wrote:
"What is a cult? Everyone seems to believe that parents that want to help their child - you know- be a parent - is somehow brainwashed into thinking a certain way.
I've read the posts on the mom who is selling her son's play station because he drank their "gift" champagne and other alcohol. I've read your judgments from struggling teens, the parents who are reaching out to each other in a time of crisis and helping each other. You seem to be angry at those that post on other boards that are not thinking like you. Do you want other's to share this view with you. Is that not one of the definitions of a cult?
Parents that intervened, chose an emotional growth program for their family are grateful to have others to reach out to, to stop doing what they've always been doing and learn new ways to be a parent and an individual - more in alignment with their personally defined values. Their kids are doing the same.
In reading your posts, are your personally defined values hate, blame, control, enablement, judgment, self-rightousness,cynicism or a sense of power? It's a question. :
:
Any time someone posts here that they came away with a better life, I see that many are telling them that it's only their imagination, that they were really abused and don't know it.
What is your payoff? "
You know, it's probably me you're trying to talk about with "say they were really abused and don't know it."
But that's *not* what I say. What I say is that *if* they're fresh out of the program *we* can't know which ones are saying they were helped because they really were, and which ones are saying they were helped because of the mind control techniques used in *some* programs.
There's a study out there on Swift River graduates, for example, that found that while a huge amount of parents and teens the school referred the researcher to said they "felt helped" a lot by the program with the teen's depression problems, more objective measures of depression showed no statistical before/after improvement.
There are also anecdotal cases of survivors saying they now are in treatment for PTSD from things that happened in the Program they were in, but that immediately after graduating they were saying all kinds of good things about the Programs, too.
There is also the issue of the definition of abuse one is using. Each Program generally defines everything it does as not abusive. Program leavers/graduates sometimes are using the Program's definition of abuse and not abuse when they say the Program wasn't abusive. The problem there is that sometimes the Program's definition of what is and isn't abusive differs radically from general societal norms of what is and isn't abusive.
*BUT* with all that said, any individual kid who's saying he/she was helped by a particular program and wasn't abused *MAY* well be right even in the context of general societal norms defining "help" and "abuse".
I don't say they *were* abused. I say the lack of regulation and oversight in the industry makes it very difficult for us to tell whether they were or they weren't----and that if someone posts after five years out of a particular program and doesn't work for a program and says they were helped and not abused, that's a *much* stronger statement in favor of that particular facility.
Why do *I* do this and what's *my* payoff? (I obviously can't speak for anyone else.)
I do this because as both someone with a major mental illness (stable on medication), with a lot of family members with related mental health problems, and as someone with a degree in psychology, it *matters* to me that the mental health care being provided to patients in this country is high quality *good* mental health care.
Good mental health care meets certain basic criteria:
1) It is the least restrictive *effective* treatment for that particular patient's condition.
2) It is substantiated in the scientific literature as being a safe and effective treatment for that condition OR
3) The patient is fully informed that he/she is undergoing an experimental therapy or treatment, and is part of a clinical trial of that experimental therapy or treatment or part of the workup to such a treatment OR
4) The treatment is religious in nature.
5) In cases of experimental or religious therapies or treatments, where a scientifically supported safe and effective treatment for the condition is available, the *patient himself* consents to substituting the experimental or religious treatment for the scientifically supported one. In the case of a minor, if *either* the patient or custodial parent/guardian does not consent to experimental or religious treatment, the scientific treatment should be used.
If a fourteen year old child of Christian Scientists has an ear infection and wants antibiotics instead of being prayed over, the child should have the right to take the antibiotics regardless of the parents' religious convictions.
If a fourteen year old child of Baptists has a mental illness and wants medication and cognitive behavioral therapy instead of a religious boarding school in Alabama or Missouri, the child should have the right to take the medications and CBT regardless of the parents' religious convictions.
If the fourteen year old and his parents want the religious treatment, government should stay out of it, of course.
My concern is that parents are conducting human medical experimentation on their children without the child's consent, in many cases where a different, less restrictive treatment with statistically significant scientific support exists.
I think that's unethical and morally reprehensible.
What's my payoff? Ethics in mental health care and quality of care are hot buttons of mine, for reasons I've stated.
Just like a 40-year-old African American living in Harlem had ample reason to care about Jim Crow laws and school desegregation in Georgia and Alabama, *I* care that mental health treatment of other people with mental illnesses meets high ethical and quality standards.
Timoclea
