More hysteria to 'justify' the industry. And, just WHO benefits from fear mongering?
http://www.strugglingteens.com/news/asp ... ished.htmlAspen Education Group's Academy at Swift River Featured in New Book by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist David L. Marcus
"What it Takes to Pull Me Through" Gives Parents Insights into Therapeutic Education Programs for Struggling and Under-Achieving Teens
Contact:
Lisa Freeman
Aspen Education Group
http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/suicide.htmlCalifornians once infamous for leaping into the void, from Hollywood Sign to Golden Gate, recorded their lowest suicide levels in 1996 in a century of record keeping.
But ?hope? is not an operative concept in modern stereotypes of teenagers. Experts proclaim every adolescent problem is rocketing upward. L.A.'s huge decline in youthful self-destruction wasn't supposed to happen. Officially, therefore, it didn't happen.
http://www.preventsuicidenow.com/youth- ... -decliningThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report on June 11, 2004, indicating that the suicide rate for 10- to -19-year-olds dropped about 25% from 1992 to 2001.
The suicide rate for this group was 6.2 deaths per 100,000 people in 1992, and dropped to 4.6 per 100,000 in 2001. And the overall number of suicides in the period fell from 2,151 to 1,883.
Increased Drug Use? Nope.
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/teens/a/blnida041222.htmCurrent use (past 30 days) of any illicit drug between 2001 and 2003 among students declined 11 percent, from 19.4 percent to 17.3 percent. Similar declines were seen for past year use (11 percent, from 31.8 percent to 28.3 percent) and lifetime use (9 percent, from 41.0 percent to 37.4 percent).
"Teen drug use has reached a level that we haven't seen in nearly a decade" said Director John P. Walters.
"There are now 600,000 fewer teens using drugs than there were in 2001," said John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy. "This is real progress.
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Critique of the book:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/pr ... fare-printA real-life brat camp
BY EMILY WHITE
Emily White is the author of "Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut."
January 30, 2005
WHAT IT TAKES TO PULL ME THROUGH: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out, by David L. Marcus. Houghton Mifflin, 338 pp., $25.
Americans tend to believe teenagers are more troubled now than they've ever been. Look through the archives of popular news magazines, however, and you'll see that the troubled teen story is a hardy perennial that reappears every five years or so. In these articles the modern world has become too noisy or too druggy or too violent for our vulnerable adolescents. Beneath the surface of the text there's a longing for a world in which the noise is stripped away and the kid is trouble-free, all tucked in.
David L. Marcus was a reporter working the troubled-teen beat for U.S. News & World Report when he paid a visit to the Academy at Swift River, a therapeutic boot camp for adolescents. Swift River is a for-profit institution nestled in the woods of western Massachusetts; parents pay $70,000 to cure their defiant, suicidal or video-game-addicted kids over a 14-month session.
"What It Takes to Pull Me Through" is the book that eventually came out of Marcus' trip to Swift River; after seeing the trouble these kids were in, he decided he wanted to follow them and come to understand them, to figure out why they couldn't keep themselves from kicking holes in walls, or cutting into their thighs, or throwing up their breakfasts.
He never does quite figure it out, but the book is a compelling glimpse of a surreal world, a strange and tragic setting that is just waiting for the right novelist to do it justice (maybe Joyce Carol Oates is already working on this one).
Marcus is no novelist - his prose is often ungainly ("cumulous clouds jouncing above the Everglades like massive SUVs"). But his reporting reveals some remarkable details about camp life, a labyrinthine system of rules from which the kids will hopefully emerge corrected, able to control themselves and see the good in everything.
Marcus follows Swift River's "Group 23" from its first days at camp. There's Tyrone, a black boy from Queens who stopped going to school; he would walk around the block each morning and wait for his mother to leave for work, then return home to sleep the day away. There's Mary Alice, a paper-thin, popular girl with an insatiable drug appetite. Her favorite lunch is lettuce with mustard: zero calories.
Then there's Phil, nicknamed "The Philosopher," another drug user. He's one of those adult kids who probably talked politics with the grown-ups while still in his Underoos. When the kids make lists of what they miss - McDonald's, going to movies, wearing their own clothes - Phil chimes in that he misses "ATC." What's ATC? they ask. "All Things Considered" on NPR!
Marcus is so admiring of Swift River that one can imagine the book being given away as part of its admissions package. He believes the hype about troubled teens unequivocally, stating that today "one in five children and adolescents suffer from some sort of behavior or emotional illness."
Yet, aren't these illnesses byproducts of a culture obsessed with finding a diagnosis for every small act of rebellion, a calming chemical for every twitchy kid? Now the rebel without a cause has Oppositional Defiant Disorder and might need Ritalin. Surely, some day in the future, perhaps when the Ritalin generation grows up and the half-life of the drug wears off, these diagnoses will seem outdated, like an old Time magazine in which the advertisements promise that cigarettes are good for you.
Marcus doesn't see it that way; he's as credulous and sentimental as a father standing in the doorway of an adolescent's bedroom with tears in his eyes. I can't believe you're growing up! Dad says. Please, Dad, the teenager says. You're crowding me. Close the door and let me be.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
Does Mr Marcus have any personal connections with the industry or ASR? Don't know, and no time to research that right now.
I bet he didn't bother to analyze ASR's ODD- refusing to acquire a license from the state.
[ This Message was edited by: Deborah on 2005-02-10 09:59 ][ This Message was edited by: Deborah on 2005-02-10 13:50 ]