Is there any good in the level systems?

[Nihilanthic]

I talked with the owner of my speech and language therapy place today. She sent her own daughter to a treatment place in Texas... which is supposedly a good one.

She was only there for two months, it was inspected and accredited, but two things did catch me as a little odd.

1. For two weeks, no communication with her mom. Her mom DID talk to the school and therapists constantly though. Supposedly this was so she'd stop calling her mom and friends and using them to get attention by complaining about things. *shrug*

2. A level system...

Is there any use for that? And more specifically, is there any good for it with treating DEPRESSION? it seems a level system is just to make them conform to the program, so whats the real use of it? And why let higher level kids berate the lower level ones?

Wicked men obey from fear, good men from love.
--Aristotle

[Anonymous]

The level system is used to make children live according to program ideology or to behave in a certain manner that is endorsed by the program. It's a "reward" system-- if you do what they want you to do, you get extra priviledges and move on to the higher level.

I can't see this system working for anyone with depression or other emotinoal/psychological problems. This sort of problems cannot be solved by simply behaving differently or accepting someone's authority over you. It takes work, real therapeutic (and I mean that in the conventional sense, not in the "let's tear these kids down and brainwash them" sense) work, to work these things out.

Some psychological/emotional problems, such as depression, may also be rooted in chemical imbalance in the brain, and no matter how much one's behavior is changed, it cannot fix this imbalance.

A kid may be able to fake being "happy" and act normal, but it doesn't fix anything and it only makes things worse, because the child is forced to hide his/her problem and behave as if it doesn't exist. This will only cause further harm.

[Nihilanthic]

Thats kinda what I figured and why I generally don't like level systems.

I should ask that mom why they do that sometime. I'll post her reply when I get it.

There lives more faith, in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=showproduct&affiliateId=000095&isbn=0753816571' target='_new'>Alfred Lord Tennyson

[Deborah]

Read the thread on Behavior Modification:
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... forum=9&11

There are some good articles. This one specific to levels:

In these schools and camps teenagers have to move up in the level system in order to leave the program. This is a coercive threat and it offers an unattractive result: If the teenager does not want to cooperate with the authoritative figure or comply to the rules of the level system, he will remain at level one and cannot leave the program. Desiring his freedoms, he will appear to comply with the coercer, the authority figure, in order to leave the program.

In behavior modifying schools and camps, coercion is the primary method used to behavior modify the teenagers into conformity with the goals and purposes of the program. In the majority of these programs, levels systems, systems of rewards and punishments based on propriety are used and are perceived as a coercive offer. The teenagers cannot refuse participation in the level system. Therefore, it is coercive treatment because the behavior modifying technique of level systems used is against the will of the teenager. Rather than staying at the bottom level where all personal freedoms are relinquished, a teenager will participate in the level system in an attempt to move up and get out. Moving up in the level system is desirable because there are privileges, and any reasonable teenager will act in order to obtain more of their personal freedoms that have been denied. This use of coercion is unjust because our society respects the autonomy of persons: ?In societies stressing the values of respecting the autonomy of persons, from a moral point of view coercion is prima facie wrong?. (9) At some point, trying to modify someone?s behavior forces him to act in a certain way, and this ?forcing? can be defined as coercion. (10) Forcing a person to act in a certain way is different from rationally persuading or manipulating him.


[ This Message was edited by: Deborah on 2004-09-23 14:28 ]

[Anonymous]

Levels and level-based systems induce high levels of stress in the patient---obviously.

They work by putting the child in an unbearable situation, and taking some of the unpleasantness away at each "level" of compliance with the program requirements to fake sanity.

The child *does* learn to fake sanity, usually.  Usually very effectively.

1) the *last* thing you want to do to a depression psych patient is *add* stress to his/her life.

2) teaching them to "fake good," habitually, and not trust parents and mental health professionals to let them know something is wrong, and *what* is wrong, is terribly, horribly dangerous.  It courts suicide by making a patient who is actively planning suicide perfectly able to conceal all signs until you come home and find him/her dead.

I would *not* believe this of a level based program where the base levels were not living conditions significantly below what the child is used to as "normal"---unpleasant, stimulus-impoverished environments that stress the patient.

If you had a level-based program with a *pleasant*  base level and true earned privileges, perhaps it wouldn't be actively harmful.

The problem is that moving house is one of the major stressors on the life stress index, regardless, even in ideal circumstances--which a program isn't.

Walking in gardens, painting pictures, petting puppies, and weaving baskets is a *far* better residential model for a depression patient than the kind of austerity you apply to a kid who's pissed off at the world and treating everyone around him like crap.

Yeah, an austerity program might make a depression patient so much *more* depressed and apathetic that she'd be unable to muster the energy to plan and carry out a suicide, but it's hardly an improvement, because you're giving the kid a new low in the worst case model of what can happen in her life, she'll expect the worse, she'll *want* to be dead, she'll think about it a lot, and as soon as the depression lifts enough for her to carry out her plan (which she'll have learned to  be perfectly secretive about), she'll suicide.

Nobody tracks how many depression patients get home from these places and suicide, relative to depression patients that *don't* get sent.

A depressed kid that is actively a danger to herself *needs* to be hospitalized.

But these level-based austerity programs are like pouring gasoline on a fire.  Sure, maybe the blast will blow you clear and you'll *survive* it, but it's a damned stupid thing to do.

Timoclea
(Julie Cochrane, BS in Applied Psychology from Georgia Tech, 1990.  8 quarters of Dean's List.  Living with early onset bipolar disorder 32 years, from a family with a lot of mental illness, mother of a bipolar child.  I'm not an expert in the field of clinical psychology or psychiatry, but I'm not exactly your average layman, either.)