Fornits

Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: Whooter on May 25, 2013, 01:38:12 PM

Title: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 25, 2013, 01:38:12 PM
Quote from: "psy"
Overseen by a third party?   Paid for by Aspen, you mean.  There are plenty of problems with that "study".  So many, in fact, that I thought you had long ago given up on defending it.  Here's a detailed thread on the topic (of which there are many).  Let's keep discussion of the Behrens study to that thread, if we can, as it's closer to the topic than this thread.  Far too many threads have been derailed talking about that study.

The study was funded by Aspen Education, Conducted by Canyon Research and was overseen by a third party.  The 3rd party was WIRB which is an Institutional Review board.  They reviewed and approved the study and looked at areas like the Canyon Research employees previous ties to the industry, if they had any financial ties(other than the current study)during the study etc..  WIRB is also responsible for reviewing the majority of drug submissions to the FDA.  So they are a reputable firm.

This was a study conducted surveying 1,000 parents and graduates of a few programs. The results were presented at the Annual meeting of the APA American Psychological Association.

If my memory serves me well the study showed that up to 80% of the kids who graduated from the programs studied were still doing well after 2 years.  Most people with an anti program bias reject the results, but aside from this small population the study serves as a great piece of information for parents and professionals alike when determining the success of the industry.

The next best thing would be for someone to fund a study who has no ties to the industry and include more programs and track these kids for 2 or more years post graduation.


Review Study here (http://http://www.scribd.com/doc/503084/Residential-Treatment-Outcomes-Study)



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Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: psy on May 27, 2013, 03:01:22 PM
And the other side of the argument is here (http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38312&p=409707#p409508).  I kindly request we drop it here as everything that can be said on the topic likely already has been.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: Whooter on May 27, 2013, 09:44:15 PM
Quote from: "psy"
And the other side of the argument is here (http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38312&p=409707#p409508).  I kindly request we drop it here as everything that can be said on the topic likely already has been.


Psy, I agree we can leave it here, but, I dont know if you are aware that the other side of the argument, you linked to, was written by ASTART.  If you have ever visited their web site you would find that they are extremely anti-program.  I dont think they could ever give a credible review/assessment of a study conducted on the industry.  If you look at the “parents speak out section” the results are 100% negative.  They lead you to believe not one child has ever been helped.  At least the study states that some kids did well and others did not.  Do you really believe they are posting an accurate account of what they hear from parents or report an accurate review of an independent study?  Or do they print what they feel fills their agenda?

The study was presented in front of the (APA) American Psychological Association. a small obscure website cant be considered credible when deciding if the study is worthy or not.  I think most people would agree.



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Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 28, 2013, 11:50:28 AM
In full disclosure I'm a member of ASTART - so feel free to take that into consideration.  However, the following should not be construed as being in any way representing the viewpoints of ASTART

ASTART is a small ad-hoc organization.  And yes it's viewpoints are slanted against entrepreneurial residential treatment, but  I wouldn't call the organization anti-residential.  It has a strong public health orientation.  And a skepticism of the role of the private marketplace to deliver good outcomes when it comes to health care, particularly behavioral health care.

However, the credentials of the individuals who developed the critique of the Behrens study are the kinds of folks who have been asked to keynote conferences, not just provide a poster presentation at them.  Robert Friedman facilitated a mental health research conference for almost 25 years.

The critique stands on its own merits.  You can take from it what you will.  The critique still allows for you to take away from it that parents and youth perceive that the youth has made progress from the time they entered the program to the time that they left the program.  That's not nothing.  For a lot of families it's enough.  As marketing research its something, as public health research it's junk.  It doesn't go far beyond being a satisfaction survey.

Now, if ASPEN or one of their representatives wants to return the favor and critique the quality of some of the mental health outcomes research of it's competitors, they're more than welcome to do that.  The public health research also suggests that the average person should wait to have a mammogram, bases evidence on recidivism rates and not educational outcomes when it holds MST up as a standard, and advocates policies that would inhibit individuals being able to get the very best care that they can afford, but would lead to the best outcomes across the population.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 28, 2013, 02:38:06 PM
http://natsap.org/wp-content/uploads/20 ... I-2013.pdf (http://natsap.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ONLINE-Journal-VI-2013.pdf)

The Alpine Academy study I referenced in another thread apparently was just published here.  There is no study here that is as egregious as the Behrens study in terms of establishing conclusions.  And in fact, there is no study that singularly features ASEPN programs - Jared Balmer has left ASPEN to start his own 36 bed program focusing on anxiety disorders in boys.

I want to give NATSAP credit for not engaging in deception with the research that they have peer-reviewed.  But what's left is pretty weak in terms of outcomes.  

In all, what's presented is pretty weak in terms of who they treat, how they treat it, and what the final outcomes are.  And the singular message is, that youth respond to structure and accountability, but the NATSAP programs don't have the power to remake families (well, they could if they actually provided more than parent seminars and actually did some real family work) or society.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: Whooter on May 29, 2013, 12:09:55 PM
I guess many can argue whether or not the studies covered enough ground (personally I wish they had tracked these kids for longer periods of time), but from the few studies that have been done the result have been positive and encouraging.  As a minimum the studies show that the kids are placed on a good track.  I don’t think we can fault the programs for lack of studies.  Drug trials are typically funded by private donors, the government or the drug companies themselves.  Many here and at places like ASTART do not accept any studies which are funded by the industry even though they are overseen by a 3rd party.  I firmly believe that if the studies had come out negative towards the industry then people here on fornits and at ASTART would embrace the results and the structure of the study would be less of an issue.
 
So that leaves private donations or the Government and I don't think they see any future value in doing this.  Obama care or any other insurance company would never consider any residential treatment beyond 30 days so why invest in a study?  All proceeds will be coming from those who can afford out-of-pocket costs for decades to come and the industry needs to continue reaching out to those who can afford the cost.



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Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 29, 2013, 02:18:26 PM
Fair enough, though the problem with the Behrens study was less the study itself, but how it was marketed.  A for-profit company commissioned a study that analyzes and tells the story of the data in such a way that makes the company look good.  Behrens wasn't paid to cook the data, that would be unethical, but she brings her own biases to bear in looking for the best story to tell with the data.

ASPEN presenting the data as a for-profit entity for marketing purposes, is actually less obnoxious than NATSAP presenting the data to make an objective statement about the scientific effects of the treatment that their member programs provide.  But this was back in the Jan Moss era, so I think we can let bygones be bygones.

But as I said, I think the issue has been resolved.  I credit NATSAP, and the member programs that are collecting and sharing data, to try to understand the treatment effects of their programs.  And for showing their hand based on what they're measuring, what is they thing that they're treating.  

Certainly in the case of Montana Academy, that's clear - send your kid to rural Montana so they can mature - never mind why a young person might be demonstrating immaturity (were they sexually abused, are their parents terrible role models when it comes to maturity and narcissism, are they just spoiled brats).  Simple answers, simple solutions, simple analysis.  Not saying it's not well-meaning - but that's how you can both have some real successes in these programs and cause real harm, and it's rather predictable.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: Whooter on May 29, 2013, 02:49:57 PM
Everyone markets study results and tries to leverage the results to their advantage:

four out of five dentists recommended sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum".  They may fail to tell you that the fifth dentist recommended that his patients not chew gum at all.  That would be bad for the gum industry.

The people that conduct studies typically have ties to the industry that they are conducting.  Heart studies have heart doctors, drug studies have clinicians and specialists who once worked for private industry and so on.  Its very common and in fact makes the study more viable because the people are familiar with the area being studied and can better direct them.  The problem is if there is money changing hands to sway the results and this is where an IRB comes in.  They approve the study and insure it is done fairly.



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Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 29, 2013, 03:51:21 PM
Well yes, glad you agree.  Look I appreciate your vigor in defending your perspective.  

I look at the parent-choice industry as akin to the carbon fuel industry or the gun industry.  Both industries provide a valuable commodity that the people who consume the commodity get utility from.  That there are safer products that produce fewer externalities, that are however less efficient is of no interest to the industry, unless they determine that there is in fact a market for them.  

That an industry that produces such externalities, provokes such criticisms by those who are worried about the effects that are spread over the entire population should not be surprising. With guns it's the suicide rate, with oil it's pollution, and with the TTI it's how the industry reinforces the stigma of behavioral disorders by actively segregating individuals with those behaviors from the community.

These are just some examples of the community impacts from a service or commodity that benefits individuals at the personal level.  It should be obvious to all how it tends to be conservatives who support policies that benefit the individual, and it's liberals who tend to benefit policies whose benefits are distributed across the public.

(I chose to use oil and guns and not tobacco as my comparison point, because I recognize for the right person in the right situation and the right time the use of carbon fuels, and the use of a gun might be the most beneficial thing for society, but it's their overuse, and building of policy around their use, and even poorly thought out laws and implementation of such laws that seek to limit their use, that create preventable harm)

A question directly to Whooter.  Is it too much to ask those who operate and work in programs, and those who refer to programs to think about the broader impact of the services they provide beyond the transactional relationship.  As many of the individuals in the industry are in fact licensed social workers, do they have a responsibility to society that goes beyond their client?  This was an issue that was brought up in a workshop I attended that looked at programs that operate in the public sector who are looking to or have entered the private pay market - and whether it reenforces classism to separate the two populations in two different programs (i.e. Starr Commonwealth/Montcalm Schools as one approach or the combined population at Wediko which is another).   Or is their only responsibility to the client?
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: Whooter on May 29, 2013, 11:03:58 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
A question directly to Whooter.  Is it too much to ask those who operate and work in programs, and those who refer to programs to think about the broader impact of the services they provide beyond the transactional relationship.  As many of the individuals in the industry are in fact licensed social workers, do they have a responsibility to society that goes beyond their client?  This was an issue that was brought up in a workshop I attended that looked at programs that operate in the public sector who are looking to or have entered the private pay market - and whether it reenforces classism to separate the two populations in two different programs (i.e. Starr Commonwealth/Montcalm Schools as one approach or the combined population at Wediko which is another).   Or is their only responsibility to the client?

My opinion:

We all have a responsibility to society  because we are an intricate part of it but Doctors, nurse, LCSW's etc particularly do not have a responsibility to society when dealing with a person in their care.  

Brombowski, The reason why I think this way is they need to advocate for their patient first and society second.  LCSW’s are trained to work with people one on one (like most medical professionals), not society as a whole.

If your patient is 65 years old and needs a new kidney, should you allow a patient who is 35 to get that kidney because they are younger and would be better served by it and can better contribute to society?  Would you under-treat a patient for pain for fear they would become addicted and may need further treatment for addiction and become a burden on society?  Should a doctor provide expensive intensive care for a newborn who is likely to die or have a terrible quality of life, which would impact society and the cost to care for this child?  Would you breach patient confidentiality if you know the patients’ health status would inflict harm on others in society like communicable diseases?  Would you perform an abortion if the mothers life was in danger if she carried full term even if society decides it is against the law?  or if your personal religion was against abortion? What is the right decision?

LCSW cannot take all of that on, they need to advocate for the patient that they have responsibility for (at that moment in time) and do the best they can to improve that persons quality of life.



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Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 30, 2013, 06:57:06 AM
It was an honest question, and that was an honest answer, thanks.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: blombrowski on May 30, 2013, 07:11:55 AM
And btw, those are all really good examples.  The follow-up then is, when the legitimate care of the individual, interferes with the well-being of the many, or the mores of society, does government have a legitimate role in intervening between the client-helper relationship.  I suppose the answer will depend on where you stand politically and the specifics of the situation.
Title: Re: Independent Study Shows Success.
Post by: Whooter on May 30, 2013, 12:05:57 PM
I think each case has to be handled individually.  For example individuals should be able to choose if they want to smoke cigarettes or not.  But their decision to smoke will affect society as a whole exposing them to second hand smoke, creating health issues with themselves which will burden society financially when society has to pick up the tab for their long term care.

We, as a society, cannot just make cigarette smoking illegal but we can educate the people on the dangers of smoking and raise the taxes on cigarettes to help pay for the damage they do financially and ease the burden of the non-smokers.  As costs increase so does taxes until smoking becomes too expensive to abuse.

The key, in most cases, is to keep the government as small as possible and out of the decision making process.  A large government is bad for the individual and bad for society as a whole.



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Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on May 30, 2013, 02:07:55 PM
I hope y'all don't mind.  I split the thread and re-titled it to something neutral.  It was either that or bump one of the other old threads and have two competing threads on the same topic going at the same time.  Feel free to quote any of the other posts from other threads if you feel something has been cut off or left out.  I've been on vacation for the past few days so please excuse my lack of participation in this debate.

Quote from: "Whooter"
Drug trials are typically funded by private donors, the government or the drug companies themselves.

But pharmaceuticals are much unlike the industry in that the FDA has to verify, with years of research and mountains of evidence, that a particular drug is safe before it is sold to the public.  The industry has never been held to any comparable standard. It makes it's own rules and you're darned right that who pays for a study and whether or not it's peer reviewed matters.  It's the difference between marketing and science.  If a program controls the data and pays for the "research", there is a good chance that it's going to make the program look good.  They wouldn't very well pay for it otherwise.  Even still, they make mistakes and drugs are recalled. More often than not, programs have to be shut down by the authorities or sued out of existence before they stop doing what they've always done.

Parents should not be trusting their kids with untested techniques regardless of desperation.  The miracle cure of today very often turns out to be the quackery of tomorrow.  People once lined up, voluntarily, to get "ice-pick" trans-orbital lobotomies.  We now consider this barbaric, and those who were subjected to it, victims.  The same is true of those who went through the last generation of programs.  The Seed turned out to be harmful.  Oops.  Next one will be better.  Straight too.  Cedu as well.  Can't forget WWASP.

And now we have Aspen and so forth, all derived from the last generation of programs, and doing more or less the exact same things the previous generation used to do (See Aspen Program MBA's LifeSteps, and how they were IDENTICAL to the Propheets at CEDU/Hilltop, and in the CEDU derived program I was in, down to the french maid outfit (http://http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1891082-3,00.html)).  Yet we're supposed to believe that they've changed, or that they're safe, or that forcing little girls to sexualize and humiliate themselves in front of an audience is somehow a good thing.

You want to tell me that's beneficial?  Well.  Perhaps it works.  In the same way that a trans-orbital lobotomy worked.  They're anxieties and depression -- everything faded away.  The results were there, but so were the scars.  Hollow people with hollow thoughts and no real feelings -- compliant and docile pet humans.  It's for this reason that even if the study is accurate, it mean nothing whatsoever to me.  If the consequence of being involuntarily "healed" is the loss of individuality, is the loss of any sort or rebellion, then that cure comes at the cost of the very thing that makes us human.

Brian has never been in a program so he doesn't know what it's like.  I do.  Data does not matter.  Even if.  Even if your data was accurate and even if the study was independent and peer reviewed.  It would still be ignoring the barbarity of the process.  I've seen the hollow people walking around.  You look into their eyes and you can tell that the spark of life is gone, and even when they leave the program and inevitably snap out of it, they're never quite the same again.  Like a lobotomy or FGM, such a permanent act should never be performed on a person, even a child, without their consent.

I get the ethical dilemma.  What do you do if a kid is shooting heroin or smoking meth or whatever.  Fine.  That's a big problem and maybe in those cases a detox and outpatient therapy are probably appropriate, but most of these kids who are in these programs are there for the "issues" the program targets in the marketing with reads like a laundry list of every behavioral problem known to man -- and they're all treated the same way!  I can't imagine that being successful. If it was, wouldn't these techniques have been adopted by mainstream mental health?  Is there a conspiracy against the techniques the programs use that legitimate therapists would never dare adopt them?  Are programs that far ahead of legitimate science?  I'm not buying it, and even if it were true, it wouldn't make it right.  There are far better ways of treating kids locally, but that's another topic.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: DannyB II on May 30, 2013, 03:44:36 PM
Quote from: "psy"
I hope y'all don't mind.  I split the thread and re-titled it to something neutral.  It was either that or bump one of the other old threads and have two competing threads on the same topic going at the same time.  Feel free to quote any of the other posts from other threads if you feel something has been cut off or left out.  I've been on vacation for the past few days so please excuse my lack of participation in this debate.

Quote from: "Whooter"
Drug trials are typically funded by private donors, the government or the drug companies themselves.

But pharmaceuticals are much unlike the industry in that the FDA has to verify, with years of research and mountains of evidence, that a particular drug is safe before it is sold to the public.  The industry has never been held to any comparable standard. It makes it's own rules and you're darned right that who pays for a study and whether or not it's peer reviewed matters.  It's the difference between marketing and science.  If a program controls the data and pays for the "research", there is a good chance that it's going to make the program look good.  They wouldn't very well pay for it otherwise.  Even still, they make mistakes and drugs are recalled. More often than not, programs have to be shut down by the authorities or sued out of existence before they stop doing what they've always done.

Parents should not be trusting their kids with untested techniques regardless of desperation.  The miracle cure of today very often turns out to be the quackery of tomorrow.  People once lined up, voluntarily, to get "ice-pick" trans-orbital lobotomies.  We now consider this barbaric, and those who were subjected to it, victims.  The same is true of those who went through the last generation of programs.  The Seed turned out to be harmful.  Oops.  Next one will be better.  Straight too.  Cedu as well.  Can't forget WWASP.

And now we have Aspen and so forth, all derived from the last generation of programs, and doing more or less the exact same things the previous generation used to do (See Aspen Program MBA's LifeSteps, and how they were IDENTICAL to the Propheets at CEDU/Hilltop, and in the CEDU derived program I was in, down to the french maid outfit (http://http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1891082-3,00.html)).  Yet we're supposed to believe that they've changed, or that they're safe, or that forcing little girls to sexualize and humiliate themselves in front of an audience is somehow a good thing.

You want to tell me that's beneficial?  Well.  Perhaps it works.  In the same way that a trans-orbital lobotomy worked.  They're anxieties and depression -- everything faded away.  The results were there, but so were the scars.  Hollow people with hollow thoughts and no real feelings -- compliant and docile pet humans.  It's for this reason that even if the study is accurate, it mean nothing whatsoever to me.  If the consequence of being involuntarily "healed" is the loss of individuality, is the loss of any sort or rebellion, then that cure comes at the cost of the very thing that makes us human.

Brian has never been in a program so he doesn't know what it's like.  I do.  Data does not matter.  Even if.  Even if your data was accurate and even if the study was independent and peer reviewed.  It would still be ignoring the barbarity of the process.  I've seen the hollow people walking around.  You look into their eyes and you can tell that the spark of life is gone, and even when they leave the program and inevitably snap out of it, they're never quite the same again.  Like a lobotomy or FGM, such a permanent act should never be performed on a person, even a child, without their consent.

I get the ethical dilemma.  What do you do if a kid is shooting heroin or smoking meth or whatever.  Fine.  That's a big problem and maybe in those cases a detox and outpatient therapy are probably appropriate, but most of these kids who are in these programs are there for the "issues" the program targets in the marketing with reads like a laundry list of every behavioral problem known to man -- and they're all treated the same way!  I can't imagine that being successful. If it was, wouldn't these techniques have been adopted by mainstream mental health?  Is there a conspiracy against the techniques the programs use that legitimate therapists would never dare adopt them?  Are programs that far ahead of legitimate science?  I'm not buying it, and even if it were true it wouldn't make it right.  There are far better ways of treating kids locally, but that's another topic.


Here is the link for an article about Dr.Walter Freeman, AKA "The Showman".   http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2 ... -lobotomy/ (http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/03/21/the-surprising-history-of-the-lobotomy/)

Excerpt from the article:

"He wanted to find a more efficient way to perform the procedure without drilling into a person’s head like Moniz did. So he created the 10-minute transorbital lobotomy (known as the “ice-pick” lobotomy), which was first performed at his Washington, D.C. office on January 17, 1946.

(Freeman would go on to perform about 2,500 lobotomies. Known as a showman, he once performed 25 lobotomies in one day. To shock his audiences, he also liked to insert picks in both eyes simultaneously.)

According to the NPR article, the procedure went as follows:

“As those who watched the procedure described it, a patient would be rendered unconscious by electroshock. Freeman would then take a sharp ice pick-like instrument, insert it above the patient’s eyeball through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobes of the brain, moving the instrument back and forth. Then he would do the same thing on the other side of the face.”


Yes, the industry is evolving and thank god but the motives never evolve. Still the same, GREED!! When money is more important than the safety of people, there is a big problem with society.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: blombrowski on May 30, 2013, 04:30:40 PM
True, I was never in an organized thought reform program.  But surely long-term childhood institutionalization has to count for something?  And actually, thanks for the new thread.  

Data does count for something.  You can quantify the number of serious anxiety disorders, auto-immune deficiency disorders, addictions, and suicides that have happened post program.  How many youth who this would describe have parents who are still satisfied customers of the TTI.  

So to Whooter, what would you think about the interventions of the TTI, if most youth had what would be considered successful outcomes (high school and college graduation, successful employment, post program compliance with family rules) but we could show that a significant percentage of that same population had the conditions listed above (obviously suicide wouldn't be one of them).
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on May 30, 2013, 05:53:51 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
True, I was never in an organized thought reform program.  But surely long-term childhood institutionalization has to count for something?  

I apologize.  I didn't mean to belittle your experience.  I totally forgot you mentioned that once.  I'd like to hear your story someday if that's OK with you.

You are right, however, that a thought reform environment is unique.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 30, 2013, 08:58:46 PM
Quote from: "psy"

But pharmaceuticals are much unlike the industry in that the FDA has to verify, with years of research and mountains of evidence, that a particular drug is safe before it is sold to the public.  The industry has never been held to any comparable standard. It makes it's own rules and you're darned right that who pays for a study and whether or not it's peer reviewed matters.  It's the difference between marketing and science.  If a program controls the data and pays for the "research", there is a good chance that it's going to make the program look good.  They wouldn't very well pay for it otherwise.  Even still, they make mistakes and drugs are recalled. More often than not, programs have to be shut down by the authorities or sued out of existence before they stop doing what they've always done.

Each side can pick and choose horrible events that occurred in programs or public school systems, college campuses to make their point that they are not 100% safe or that staff and people can be abusive, but the programs themselves are not designed to be abusive as you have indicated.  Giving these kids a highly structured environment has been very successful, psy, and since no outside agency has stepped forward to perform a study the programs themselves have paid for their own studies and tried to distance themselves as best they can from influencing the results by hiring and IRB (Independent Review board)  to oversee the study.  There will always be detractors, like yourself, who try to undercut the studies by saying things like the Framingham heart study is invalid because there were heart surgeons involved in the collection of data, for example, or the head of the study group previously worked in a hospital etc.    therefore the results are invalid!

A lot of work and effort went into these studies and the results are being used to market the TTI as they should be.  I dont think you could present a study that has not been used to market the product that was studied.



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Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 30, 2013, 09:50:00 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
True, I was never in an organized thought reform program.  But surely long-term childhood institutionalization has to count for something?  And actually, thanks for the new thread.  

Data does count for something.  You can quantify the number of serious anxiety disorders, auto-immune deficiency disorders, addictions, and suicides that have happened post program.  How many youth who this would describe have parents who are still satisfied customers of the TTI.  

So to Whooter, what would you think about the interventions of the TTI, if most youth had what would be considered successful outcomes (high school and college graduation, successful employment, post program compliance with family rules) but we could show that a significant percentage of that same population had the conditions listed above (obviously suicide wouldn't be one of them).


What parents look for are results and if the child is placed back on track and goes back to high school and graduates and then graduates from college etc. then most of them would feel the TTI was a success and I think most of us would agree this is a big step.  If the child commits suicide, becomes addicted to drugs etc. years after graduation no one would try to blame the program for that.  How could anyone tie that back?

Imagine a person with breast cancer who is recommended to have a mastectomy and then chemo therapy and the cancer goes into remission,  then a few years later the cancer comes back.  I dont think the family is going to try to blame the doctor who recommended the treatment or the mastectomy as the cause of her relapse.  Do you see what I mean?



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Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: blombrowski on May 31, 2013, 06:57:07 AM
Yes, I see what you mean, but it's a poor analogy.  Now, let's use your example, and let's say there was a doctor that was using an untested cancer treatment, that had a very high success rate for remission across a population of women, but within this cohort of women two years out they had a higher rate of relapse than a similar group of women who received traditional radiation and surgery.  As an individual I would be thanking the doctor for the period of remission, but if I got together with the rest of his patients, I might start to wonder why most of us relapsed.

Or, maybe we didn't relapse with cancer, but most of us developed liver damage.  As an individual, I would never attribute my liver damage to a breast cancer treatment, but if most of the other people who got the treatment had the same issue, I'd start asking questions.

For a long time I would have nightmares, and think obsessively about my hospital experience, and I always wondered if it was just me or is this a common experience.  When you're isolated you go about your business and get on with life.  Only after finding out about CAFETY did it dawn on me that there was a whole community of people who had shared experiences (even as different as mine was).

Forgive the following tangent- but where exactly are the community of program parents that are there to provide support to each other.  It's to me the one glaring gap that NATSAP/IECA have in their infrastructure, that presumably would make what they offer better.  Unless, the industry thrives off of the fact that parents of troubled teens are isolated and they prefer to stay that way (and I'm not trying to indicate that the industry does this intentionally, it just is)
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on May 31, 2013, 07:58:26 AM
Quote from: "Whooter"
the programs themselves are not designed to be abusive as you have indicated.

No.  They're often not intended to be.  Malice or greed sometimes enters into the equation but it's not a requirement.  Many of these programs are created by people who are merely following what they were taught.  They experienced something they considered to be positive in the program they were in (as staff, participant, or both), and they decide to carry on that experience to others.  Often they believe they have a solution that is superior to psychology, to psychiatry -- to any sort of science.  They have the one true cure to all varieties of mental/social ills and it's their goal to bring it to all who need it, especially the children who in turn can bring the grand vision to others.

You see it all the time with religion, or with cults.  Evidence is not necessary and when it exists it's only to pander to those who demand it, and only so much as is necessary to obfuscate, to confuse, to keep the grand vision from any interference and provide it with a front of legitimacy to the uninitiated.  To me that's what these studies are.  Nothing more.  Of course you have to wonder what happens to the fundamentalist who is presented with hard evidence that their own methods do not work.

It reminds me of a bunch of Scientologists who once attempted to prove Hubbard's techniques to be scientifically valid using the scientific method.  Needless to say, they were all declared "supressive persons" for their efforts.  Not all of them lost their "faith", however (and ended up in the Free Zone (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Zone_(Scientology)) if I recall).  In the industry I have to wonder what a program director who found out his methods didn't work would do.  A fundamentalist loses his faith and is confronted with the question: do I fake it and reap the benefits I've grown accustomed to -- perhaps trying to change things so they do work, do i deny the results of the study in the face of all the evidence, or do I admit defeat and leave?

My feeling is most on top choose the former -- often isolated from the results of what they've done.  Most of the boots on the ground, on the other hand, give up and leave after realizing all their efforts to treat kids and spread the grand vision was for naught, and that it might have actually done more harm than good.  I'd wager this is a good part of why the "grunt" staff turnover in so many programs is so high.  Eventually the facts on the ground that "shit just isn't working" becomes too much to ignore.  In the program I was in I witnessed two separate staff members expressing just this sentiment out loud.  One left.  One who was higher up attempted to change things.

Based on what I saw when returning later to survey the place, I don't think she was able to change much.  Perhaps she realized by changing the structure laid out by the founding fathers of theses systems, the thought reform environment would cease to function.  It's a bit like trying to redesign a car without even a basic understanding of mechanics.  Those who are able to manage, however, by comprehending the totality of the system -- those are the sociopaths.  They exist, but by and large I think most programs are rife with normal, misguided, people who are just trying to do what they can to help kids.  As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: blombrowski on May 31, 2013, 10:44:16 AM
"Designed to be abusive" might not be the right terminology - the intent in most programs is not to abuse.  However, my hypothesis is that the CEDU influenced programs are designed in such a way that it should be expected to cause harm.

Lifesteps, raps, etc. were designed to be stressful.  If I take a group of a hundred random people and prepare them for a marathon exactly the same way, some people are going to be successful and be in the best shape of their life.  Some people are going to finish the marathon, but have permanent knee damage.  And probably at least one person will suffer a fatal heart attack, either before, during, or after the marathon.  

The people for whom the CEDU process is successful become its advocates (starting or working in programs, becoming educational consultants, fundraising for the industry).  The people for whom it was not successful are generally silenced (at least until this forum was developed).  It doesn't take away the fact that anyone with a modicum of knowledge about psychology should have known that the CEDU process was likely to cause harm in some of the people who were served by it.

To Mike's point, whether forcing this stress upon a person in an effort to change their behavior, even if objectively it was in their own best interest is an ethical dilemma that I don't care to engage in.

What does matter to me, is exposing that these negative outcomes are real, that they exist, and if nothing else raising the bar in what the public considers to be a good outcome.  

Kids were dying in programs, not because they were merely accidents, but because there was a pattern of staff not taking health complaints seriously because youth were viewed as being manipulative as a baseline.  I hope that it finally got through to people that, deaths such as these were not acceptable, and that the culture of the industry has changed to at least assume that potential life-threatening conditions are real, before assuming the kid is lying.  3 1/2 years without a parent-choice industry program death.  I sincerely hope that it's not a fluke, and it's result of programs looking at their practices and making the programs safer.  The industry had for years tried to make it seem that deaths were rare compared to other physical activities, and minimize the danger.  Pressure by advocates has changed the calculus to where a program death, particularly one caused by neglect, can put a program out of business.  

Similarly, there have been programs that have recognized that the transition from program back to community is challenging, and that there are many youth that experience a J-curve, (I would argue that it's more like a backwards-J curve or at least a U-curve), so a number of programs have developed some kind of after-care program.  The presence of these after-care programs has led to the occasional use of them as preventative-care programs, keeping youth from going into programs to begin with.  

The industry takes a strictly capitalist, individualist, parents' rights model of treatment.  If we assume a highly transparent system (of which the industry is still very opaque, but not nearly as opaque as it was many years ago), where the customer and the consumer are the same (this will never be the case), this model should be expected to lead to good outcomes on it's own - as individuals will cease purchasing a product that they know doesn't work.  This is not an industry where we would expect the free-market to work.  On the other hand, CAFETY for instance, bends socialist, collectivist, youth rights perspective. We can debate ideology, and never get anywhere.  Or we can debate actual outcomes.  What we might be saying here that complicates things, is that the outcomes that matter to the customer (compliant, law-abiding, college educated) are different than the resulting outcomes to the consumer (constantly anxious, loss of identity, loss of community).

First we have to make the point that the internal outcomes that the person who experiences a program, actually exists.  Then the industry has to figure out if they can achieve the first set of outcomes without the second set of outcomes.  Then they have to figure out if it's profitable to do so.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 31, 2013, 04:24:58 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
"Designed to be abusive" might not be the right terminology - the intent in most programs is not to abuse.  However, my hypothesis is that the CEDU influenced programs are designed in such a way that it should be expected to cause harm.

Lifesteps, raps, etc. were designed to be stressful.  If I take a group of a hundred random people and prepare them for a marathon exactly the same way, some people are going to be successful and be in the best shape of their life.  Some people are going to finish the marathon, but have permanent knee damage.  And probably at least one person will suffer a fatal heart attack, either before, during, or after the marathon.

I like that analogy better myself

Quote
The people for whom the CEDU process is successful become its advocates (starting or working in programs, becoming educational consultants, fundraising for the industry).  The people for whom it was not successful are generally silenced (at least until this forum was developed).  It doesn't take away the fact that anyone with a modicum of knowledge about psychology should have known that the CEDU process was likely to cause harm in some of the people who were served by it.

To Mike's point, whether forcing this stress upon a person in an effort to change their behavior, even if objectively it was in their own best interest is an ethical dilemma that I don't care to engage in.

I think the industry has to get better at screening individuals which will do well in a program.  For example, Aspergers kids would suffer inside one of these places and never get anything positive out of it.

Quote
What does matter to me, is exposing that these negative outcomes are real, that they exist, and if nothing else raising the bar in what the public considers to be a good outcome.
It isnt natural to expose ones dirty laundry or talk about the failures that one has encountered.  Its not good for business, but it doesn't mean they don't care.  

Quote
Kids were dying in programs, not because they were merely accidents, but because there was a pattern of staff not taking health complaints seriously because youth were viewed as being manipulative as a baseline.  I hope that it finally got through to people that, deaths such as these were not acceptable, and that the culture of the industry has changed to at least assume that potential life-threatening conditions are real, before assuming the kid is lying.  3 1/2 years without a parent-choice industry program death.  I sincerely hope that it's not a fluke, and it's result of programs looking at their practices and making the programs safer.  The industry had for years tried to make it seem that deaths were rare compared to other physical activities, and minimize the danger.  Pressure by advocates has changed the calculus to where a program death, particularly one caused by neglect, can put a program out of business.  

I was tracking Death rates in programs vs the public school system for years and posted them here on fornits periodically and it is encouraging that the TTI has seen safer times.  I think awareness and training has a lot to do with the decrease in deaths within the programs.

Quote
Similarly, there have been programs that have recognized that the transition from program back to community is challenging, and that there are many youth that experience a J-curve, (I would argue that it's more like a backwards-J curve or at least a U-curve), so a number of programs have developed some kind of after-care program.  The presence of these after-care programs has led to the occasional use of them as preventative-care programs, keeping youth from going into programs to begin with.  

This was a big issue with me at one time.  My daughter did not transition as easily as I would have liked and a more gradual hand-off from program to home life would have prevented a lot of problems and heartache on her part.  They have greatly improved in this area probably due to feed back from parents like myself.

Quote
The industry takes a strictly capitalist, individualist, parents' rights model of treatment.  If we assume a highly transparent system (of which the industry is still very opaque, but not nearly as opaque as it was many years ago), where the customer and the consumer are the same (this will never be the case), this model should be expected to lead to good outcomes on it's own - as individuals will cease purchasing a product that they know doesn't work.  This is not an industry where we would expect the free-market to work.  On the other hand, CAFETY for instance, bends socialist, collectivist, youth rights perspective. We can debate ideology, and never get anywhere.  Or we can debate actual outcomes.  What we might be saying here that complicates things, is that the outcomes that matter to the customer (compliant, law-abiding, college educated) are different than the resulting outcomes to the consumer (constantly anxious, loss of identity, loss of community).

First we have to make the point that the internal outcomes that the person who experiences a program, actually exists.  Then the industry has to figure out if they can achieve the first set of outcomes without the second set of outcomes.  Then they have to figure out if it's profitable to do so.

The industry has to continue to do a better job and continue to improve if it is to keep and/or expand its market base.  The industry needs to attract outside agencies willing and interested enough to review their procedures, conduct further studies mirror their polices etc. so that they get more visibility and grow.



...
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 31, 2013, 04:55:00 PM
Quote from: "psy"

  Most of the boots on the ground, on the other hand, give up and leave after realizing all their efforts to treat kids and spread the grand vision was for naught, and that it might have actually done more harm than good.  I'd wager this is a good part of why the "grunt" staff turnover in so many programs is so high.  Eventually the facts on the ground that "shit just isn't working" becomes too much to ignore.  In the program I was in I witnessed two separate staff members expressing just this sentiment out loud.  One left.  One who was higher up attempted to change things.

Based on what I saw when returning later to survey the place, I don't think she was able to change much.  Perhaps she realized by changing the structure laid out by the founding fathers of theses systems, the thought reform environment would cease to function.  It's a bit like trying to redesign a car without even a basic understanding of mechanics.  Those who are able to manage, however, by comprehending the totality of the system -- those are the sociopaths.  They exist, but by and large I think most programs are rife with normal, misguided, people who are just trying to do what they can to help kids.  As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I saw things a little differently.  The turn over rate is high because of the stress, long hours and dedication needed to make these programs successful.  I think if we were to measure the number of staff who watched these kids "to the end" and saw their growth at graduation, the number of staff who signed up for another group would be high.  All the staff that I met wanted to pick up a new peer group and start again.  Witnessing these kids transition and get reunited with their families was something they wanted to do again.  Some could not because of commitments to graduate school, career path obligations etc.



...
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Pile of Dead Kids on May 31, 2013, 06:50:02 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
3 1/2 years without a parent-choice industry program death.

http://wiki.fornits.com/index.php?title=Victims (http://wiki.fornits.com/index.php?title=Victims)
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: blombrowski on May 31, 2013, 07:19:36 PM
Thanks for the fact check.  I was referring to specifically the kinds of circumstances found in the Aaron Bacon and Sergey Blauchstein deaths.  Deaths that could be directly attributed to program design in a "parent-choice" facility.  If we reduce the time frame to three years, the deaths listed are the function of "flukes" i.e. the traffic accident at Sunrise, or deaths in publicly funded group homes/rtcs i.e. Daystar, Leak & Watts.

The restraint deaths were all preventable, but can you just hear Whooter saying "well that's what you get with government funded residential".
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 31, 2013, 08:45:12 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
Thanks for the fact check.  I was referring to specifically the kinds of circumstances found in the Aaron Bacon and Sergey Blauchstein deaths.  Deaths that could be directly attributed to program design in a "parent-choice" facility.  If we reduce the time frame to three years, the deaths listed are the function of "flukes" i.e. the traffic accident at Sunrise, or deaths in publicly funded group homes/rtcs i.e. Daystar, Leak & Watts.

The restraint deaths were all preventable, but can you just hear Whooter saying "well that's what you get with government funded residential".

Blombrowski, not sure how long you have been posting here, but this is the mentality that has been dominant here on Fornits over the past several years.  Imagine if a child was hit by a car on the way home from public school and a web site similar to fornits with a poster like "Pile of Dead Kids" was trying to spin the accident into the public school system being an abusive environment and wanting to shut down all public schools.  If we applied this same criteria (mentality) to public schools we would have a death list a mile long.  There are  some people who are so anti program that they somehow tricked themselves into believing that any circumstance of death is the responsibility of the program no matter how removed the child was.  Even Psy, who seems very well educated,  attributed a persons relapse into alcohol at age 43 to a program that they attended as a teen when we were talking about Barbara Walters daughter and her recent DUI arrest.

I am glad that you are able to differentiate and see that deaths like restraint deaths are those that we should be focusing on when focusing on the industry, not car accidents or DUI's at middle age.



...
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Judge Joe on May 31, 2013, 09:29:06 PM
Quote from: "Whooter"
Quote from: "psy"

  Most of the boots on the ground, on the other hand, give up and leave after realizing all their efforts to treat kids and spread the grand vision was for naught, and that it might have actually done more harm than good.  I'd wager this is a good part of why the "grunt" staff turnover in so many programs is so high.  Eventually the facts on the ground that "shit just isn't working" becomes too much to ignore.  In the program I was in I witnessed two separate staff members expressing just this sentiment out loud.  One left.  One who was higher up attempted to change things.

Based on what I saw when returning later to survey the place, I don't think she was able to change much.  Perhaps she realized by changing the structure laid out by the founding fathers of theses systems, the thought reform environment would cease to function.  It's a bit like trying to redesign a car without even a basic understanding of mechanics.  Those who are able to manage, however, by comprehending the totality of the system -- those are the sociopaths.  They exist, but by and large I think most programs are rife with normal, misguided, people who are just trying to do what they can to help kids.  As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I saw things a little differently.  The turn over rate is high because of the stress, long hours and dedication needed to make these programs successful.  I think if we were to measure the number of staff who watched these kids "to the end" and saw their growth at graduation, the number of staff who signed up for another group would be high.  All the staff that I met wanted to pick up a new peer group and start again.  Witnessing these kids transition and get reunited with their families was something they wanted to do again.  Some could not because of commitments to graduate school, career path obligations etc.



...

In addition to what Whooter said, the turnover rate in programs are high because:

1.  Management fails to support lower level staff
2.  Management fails to  provide employees with adequate training  
3.  Management enforces the old "unwritten rules"
4.  Management fails to screen violent kids
5.  Management fails to hire more staff compromising the safety of other children
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Pile of Dead Kids on May 31, 2013, 09:43:19 PM
Quote from: "blombrowski"
Thanks for the fact check.  I was referring to specifically the kinds of circumstances found in the Aaron Bacon and Sergey Blauchstein deaths.  Deaths that could be directly attributed to program design in a "parent-choice" facility.  If we reduce the time frame to three years, the deaths listed are the function of "flukes" i.e. the traffic accident at Sunrise, or deaths in publicly funded group homes/rtcs i.e. Daystar, Leak & Watts.

The restraint deaths were all preventable, but can you just hear Whooter saying "well that's what you get with government funded residential".

There shouldn't be any such thing as a private-public partnership when it comes to incarcerating anyone, child or adult. The concept is an abdication of responsibility and leads directly to abuse and death. Giving someone's life over to a private entity should be banned by Constitutional amendment.

Even if you discount those, the Rose Rock facility, where Joseph Winters was killed, is entirely private. He did something they didn't like, they jumped on him, he struggled, and they killed him at once and deleted the video recording. Frankly I count him among the lucky ones; he never had to endure much of the program at all.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on May 31, 2013, 10:13:34 PM
Quote from: "Pile of Dead Kids"
There shouldn't be any such thing as a private-public partnership when it comes to incarcerating anyone, child or adult. The concept is an abdication of responsibility and leads directly to abuse and death. Giving someone's life over to a private entity should be banned by Constitutional amendment.

Pile, You would get along with my neighbor so well.  His wife home schools all his kids and does not believe in incarcerating any of them into a private or public setting.  His wife was abused as a child in the public school system and now doesn't believe in government or privately run programs.  When we speak of my daughters experiences he writes the whole thing off to just lucky that she did well and that all government programs are treating everyone the same with no individualized training.
There are a lot of people who just feel the family should take care of their own children no matter what and they should not seek outside help.  I don't believe in that on every level but I respect peoples opinion and their right to raise their children the way they think is the best for them.



...
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: none-ya on June 01, 2013, 12:19:49 AM
No Whooter. I have no children. But I would never place my offspring in the incapable hands of untrained minimum wage ex- walmart greeters. Where are all the kids that you claim are so grateful to their respective programs? They've certainly boycotted fornits. Talk about one sided, where'syour backup? You are an army of one. I guess we shouldn't  be too worried. You are just one small voice.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on June 01, 2013, 08:13:20 AM
Quote from: "none-ya"
No Whooter. I have no children. But I would never place my offspring in the incapable hands of untrained minimum wage ex- walmart greeters.

I think most parents would agree with you, none-ya.  Although I have nothing against Walmart greeters I would prefer that my children be placed in more capable hands when it comes to their well-being.  One of the things I did research prior to placing my daughter was the capability of the staff and people she would be surrounded by.


Quote
Where are all the kids that you claim are so grateful to their respective programs? They've certainly boycotted fornits. Talk about one sided, where'syour backup? You are an army of one. I guess we shouldn't  be too worried. You are just one small voice.

Lets take Walmart, since you brought it up.  Imagine 100 people buying new televisions from Walmart and 2 of them failed to work after installing them on the wall.  How many phone calls would Walmart receive?  Who would be most likely to post their experience the guy who was happy or the one that got stiffed?
See what I mean?  The kids who did well just moved on with their life and want to forget the rough patch they experienced.  The ones that were hurt are still pissed and want to be heard.  Its a natural reaction and fornits is a good place to voice their opinions.



...
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on June 01, 2013, 09:29:41 AM
Quote from: "Whooter"
Lets take Walmart, since you brought it up.  Imagine 100 people buying new televisions from Walmart and 2 of them failed to work after installing them on the wall.  How many phone calls would Walmart receive?  Who would be most likely to post their experience the guy who was happy or the one that got stiffed?
And yet somehow people who are satisfied do post, say, amazon ratings, and not just the unsatisfied ones.  Here (http://http://www.amazon.com/Nutri-Bullet-NBR-12-12-Piece-Hi-Speed/product-reviews/B007TIE0GQ/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1).  That's a customer review page for a blender I selected at random.  As you can see, satisfied customers will not just tick a star, but also write walls of text on what they thought of the product.  Most of the reviews are very good while one in particular is very bad, due to the unit failing early, customer support being bad, and it taking a long time to get a replacement.  According to your theory, none of those positive ratings should be there.  Yet they are.   The vast majority of them are.  What I take from this is that the blender is very good, but in the off chance it breaks, i'm SOL.  Even I write reviews, and the vast majority are positive.  I can't even remember the last negative review I wrote.

Why is it that the vast majority of "reviews" here by former participants in programs are negative?  Is there something about programs that make them unique when it comes to "customer" reviews.  I grant you that it's not a valid scientific study (and neither is Behrens), but at the same time I think most who shop online will tell you that customer ratings, averaged, are generally a pretty good indicator of the quality of the product.  Is there something unique to programs that exempts them from this principle that applies to pretty much everything I can think of?  Or is the more plausible explanation that the quality of the product really isn't that great in reality.  Can you explain this?  I mean it's not like i'm removing positive reviews.  After all.  You're still around, despite almost universal insistence I get rid of you.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on June 01, 2013, 09:37:07 AM
Quote from: "Whooter"
Quote from: "blombrowski"
"Designed to be abusive" might not be the right terminology - the intent in most programs is not to abuse.  However, my hypothesis is that the CEDU influenced programs are designed in such a way that it should be expected to cause harm.

Lifesteps, raps, etc. were designed to be stressful.  If I take a group of a hundred random people and prepare them for a marathon exactly the same way, some people are going to be successful and be in the best shape of their life.  Some people are going to finish the marathon, but have permanent knee damage.  And probably at least one person will suffer a fatal heart attack, either before, during, or after the marathon.

I like that analogy better myself

Of course you do.  Marathons are healthy, or at least neutral activities for 99.9% of people (unless, perhaps, the Tsarnaev family is around).  That's where the analogy falls apart.  The goal of these activities is to affect rapid change without much consideration as to it's permanence, or it's safety.  90% of the time they affect the temporary change desired with lasting effects that can in and of themselves be considered to be negative.  Perhaps 1% "freak out" during the process and require serious psychological treatment to deal with it.  Marathons aren't designed to gain psychological compliance manipulatively.  Somebody running a marathon does so with informed consent.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: none-ya on June 02, 2013, 10:14:11 AM
Quote
Whooter wrote;
 One of the things I did research prior to placing my daughter was the capability of the staff and people she would be surrounded by.

I'm sure most parents do what they think is research by reading a brochure and watching a slick promotional video with paid shills and actors. (see S.I.B.S.) NEW AND IMPROVED!! just like any other commercial product.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on June 02, 2013, 01:51:49 PM
Quote from: "psy"
And yet somehow people who are satisfied do post, say, amazon ratings, and not just the unsatisfied ones. Here. That's a customer review page for a blender I selected at random. As you can see, satisfied customers will not just tick a star, but also write walls of text on what they thought of the product. Most of the reviews are very good while one in particular is very bad, due to the unit failing early, customer support being bad, and it taking a long time to get a replacement. According to your theory, none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are. The vast majority of them are. What I take from this is that the blender is very good, but in the off chance it breaks, i'm SOL. Even I write reviews, and the vast majority are positive. I can't even remember the last negative review I wrote.

When Amazon first came out I thought the same thing as you said “none of those positive ratings should be there. Yet they are.”  I was astonished because most people dont normally write reviews unless there is a problem.  The ones that are frustrated with customer service or have to pay return shipping or never get a satisfactory response typically want to lash back and tell the world to alert others of their misfortune.  The guy that is happy just wants to ride his new ride mower, not sit down and write back to the company.

Then the articles started coming out, Amazon was tickling their customers with “Would you take a few minutes to tell us what you think about your new Blender”?  Which was mildly successful and accounted for generating more positive reviews, but Amazon and other online merchants demanded more so they started paying people with cash and free merchandize if they would write positive reviews.

Sandra Parker, a freelance writer who was hired by a review factory this spring to pump out Amazon reviews for $10 each, said her instructions were simple. “We were not asked to provide a five-star review, but would be asked to turn down an assignment if we could not give one,” said Ms. Parker, whose brief notices for a dozen memoirs are stuffed with superlatives like “a must-read” and “a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.”

New York Times (http://http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html?_r=0)

I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.”

Paid Content (http://http://paidcontent.org/2011/06/24/419-what-shoppers-dont-realize-about-amazons-reviews/)

Psy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products.  The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman” has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (Joanne Daneman (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1IU7S4HCK1XK0/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview)).  The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.


She is a very busy lady but I dont think her hobby is sewing if you know what I mean.  This is just a random person that you linked to, what are the chances?
Buyer beware, I never believed those reviews from the start.  Human nature counters their validity.

Quote from: "psy"
Why is it that the vast majority of "reviews" here by former participants in programs are negative? Is there something about programs that make them unique when it comes to "customer" reviews. I grant you that it's not a valid scientific study (and neither is Behrens), but at the same time I think most who shop online will tell you that customer ratings, averaged, are generally a pretty good indicator of the quality of the product. Is there something unique to programs that exempts them from this principle that applies to pretty much everything I can think of? Or is the more plausible explanation that the quality of the product really isn't that great in reality. Can you explain this? I mean it's not like i'm removing positive reviews. After all. You're still around, despite almost universal insistence I get rid of you.

If we were able to get a list of all the kids as they graduated from programs and asked them to come to fornits and write a review I think you would see a lot more positive postings.  I also believe that there were many kids who hovered and read here and decided not to post based on the hostility that existed here on the boards in the past.  People with “positive outcome” posts were not treated very well here if you remember. They were all accused of having Stockholm syndrome,  but I don’t want to open that can of worms, this discussion can be for another time, another thread maybe.



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Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on June 02, 2013, 05:44:26 PM
Quote from: "Whooter"
Psy, if you look closely at the reviewers of the blender, you selected at random, you will notice that they have written hundreds of reviews on various products.  The 5th one down “Joanna Daneman” has written reviews on 8 sewing machines over the past few weeks (for a total of $2,300) along with over 100 reviews on several other products, over 500 in the past year and 2,500 total. Her history can be seen here (Joanne Daneman (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1IU7S4HCK1XK0/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview)).

And if you look at her ratings, you can see she doesn't give everything 5 stars so that would seem to conflict with what you're saying.  Also, she seems to be the only "professional reviewer" out of the first page.  The rest have reviewed anywhere from 1-4 products to several pages of reviews.  My guess is Amazon tries to actively discourage the kind of astroturfing you're suggesting happens as it's in their interest to provide customers with accurate ratings.  If it gets known that their rating systems are bad, customers will go elsewhere.  It is indeed always going to be a back and forth fight, but additions like the "real name" system, and verification that you have indeed bought the product do help things.  Such shenanigans don't go unnoticed and eventually the clever algorithms balance things out.  Sadly, unlike amazon, we have no way here of, for example, verifying whether a poster is indeed a program parent as claimed or is instead a paid representative of say -- Aspen Education.  Like you said, "buyer beware".

Quote
The ones who had problems with their product have no history except the negative review.

Now that's just no true at all.  What about this one (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1EWW6XAHCBHEZ/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview) (2 reviews, mixed ratings)?  Or this one (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3318V6FJ2KIII/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview) (4 pages of reviews, mixed ratings)?  Out of the three negative ratings on the first page, those two seemed to both rate products from time to time.  The one with two reviews reviewed the other product very positively.  So two out of three people who rated the product negatively both had rated other products and both had a history of rating things they liked positively.

If you're trying to argue that anybody who ever reviews a product positively is paid to do so -- well.  That's just silly.  You can try and tell me that all those people who liked the blender were paid zombies, but that doesn't jibe with the facts that most of the posters are verified real names (based on their credit cards), and most did not make a job out of rating stuff.  Even if what you were saying was true. Wouldn't that mean that there should be more positive program reviews here, and not less?  If so many people are helped by programs as you claim, as your "study" claims, where are the positive reviews?  Where are the hordes of new graduates out to share their thanks with the world for how their lives were saved?  Why is it that the vast majority of program reviews are bad?

You argue that if they show up, they're driven off, but more often what I've observed is a more of a Q&A sort of thing where questions are asked that lead the students to think about whether, for example, that French Maid's outfit and lapdance were really appropriate as therapy at Aspen Education's Mount Batchelor Academy.  Here's even an interview with a Carlbrook program parent (http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=20531).  Other times it's with students (and i'm having a difficult time finding a good example as positive reviews of programs are hard to come by).  And more often than not, their opinions change.  To explain why, I'll quote Richard Ofshe on thought reform / coercive persuasion.

Quote
The surprising aspect of the situationally adaptive response is that the attitudes that develop are unstable. They tend to change dramatically once the person is removed from an environment that has totalistic properties and is organized to support the adaptive attitudes. Once removed from such an environment, the person is able to interact with others who permit and encourage the expression of criticisms and doubts, which were previously stifled because of the normative rules of the reform environment (Schein 1961, p. 163; Lifton 1961, pp. 87-116, 399-415; Ofshe and Singer 1986).

In other words. It's not like it's impossible to find positive reviews. It's just that if you ask the same person who wrote a positive reviews to rewrite it in a few years, the content and attitude would likely be wildly different.  That's why you won't find positive reviews here.  As soon as somebody is exposed to "heretical" information that contradicts the group dogma, they either shut off completely and leave the site in terror, or they find themselves absorbed in new and different ideas.  Very often coming to the conclusion that their once positive views of their experiences in, for example, wearing a french maid outfits, were not so positive or healthy after all.  That's why I think there aren't very many positive "reviews".
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on June 02, 2013, 07:14:58 PM
Quote from: "psy"

If you're trying to argue that anybody who ever reviews a product positively is paid to do so -- well.  That's just silly.

But Amazon pays people to review their products, whether they buy it or not.  They dont pay people for bad reviews.  I think that you would agree that the buyer cannot trust the reviews not knowing if they are real or not.  

Quote from: "psy"
Even if what you were saying was true. Wouldn't that mean that there should be more positive program reviews here, and not less?  If so many people are helped by programs as you claim, as your "study" claims, where are the positive reviews?  Where are the hordes of new graduates out to share their thanks with the world for how their lives were saved?  Why is it that the vast majority of program reviews are bad?

No, because Amazon along with paying for reviews contact people after their purchase to ask them to review the product.  Fornits doesnt do this.  If they did contact graduates they would get more feed back on the positive side.

Quote from: "psy"
You argue that if they show up, they're driven off, but more often what I've observed is a more of a Q&A sort of thing where questions are asked that lead the students to think about whether, for example, that French Maid's outfit and lapdance were really appropriate as therapy at Aspen Education's Mount Batchelor Academy.  Here's even an interview with a Carlbrook program parent (http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=20531).  Other times it's with students (and i'm having a difficult time finding a good example as positive reviews of programs are hard to come by).  And more often than not, their opinions change.  To explain why, I'll quote Richard Ofshe on thought reform / coercive persuasion.

Exactly, you face them with the french maid question which is a negative, why?  Why not listen to their story and experiences, treat them equally, and accept it like all the others?  Why, when a person comes here with a negative experience you not ask them to talk about their positive experiences with the program?  Maybe ask if they forged any new friendships within the program, felt safe in a structured environment, enjoyed white water rafting etc.  I know that you were here for some of the graduates which were driven off and not felt welcome because of their views.  

You mentioned in a previous post that many here would like to see me driven off because of my views.  How many here would want to see a poster driven off because of their negative views towards programs?  A person with positive feedback to share about programs just wasn't welcome here.  The old fornits just wasn't welcoming to them.



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Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: psy on June 03, 2013, 05:21:37 AM
If I seem to understand you correctly you're arguing:

1, Reviews cannot be trusted when the reviewer has a financial stake in the outcome (not true, see final point (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help)) and:
2. You can't tell if people on the Amazon are real or not (you can (http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200979470)), or whether they actually bought the product (you can, as you can't review products otherwise (http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=15891471)).

In the case of Amazon, i'd dispute these two points, as they've mostly fixed any issues they one had, but i'm more interested in the fact you won't concede these two, very related points:

1. Studies cannot be trusted when the people doing the study have a vested financial interest in the outcome and:
2. You can't tell whether the data supplied by a program is accurate or whether it was just made up of whole cloth.
Title: Re: Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
Post by: Whooter on June 03, 2013, 10:52:36 AM
Quote from: "psy"
If I seem to understand you correctly you're arguing:

1, Reviews cannot be trusted when the reviewer has a financial stake in the outcome (not true, see final point (http://http://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help)) and:
2. You can't tell if people on the Amazon are real or not (you can (http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200979470)), or whether they actually bought the product (you can, as you can't review products otherwise (http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=15891471)).

In the case of Amazon, i'd dispute these two points, as they've mostly fixed any issues they one had,

I disagree, paying people to write favorable reviews in addition to asking buyers to review their experience greatly increases favorable responses.

Quote from: "psy"
but i'm more interested in the fact you won't concede these two, very related points:

1. Studies cannot be trusted when the people doing the study have a vested financial interest in the outcome and:
2. You can't tell whether the data supplied by a program is accurate or whether it was just made up of whole cloth.

It needs to be disclosed who is conducting the study, I agree.  In the case of the Behrens study I am not sure how much more transparent they could be.  They hired an outside agency and paid for an IRB (independent review board) to review and approve the study.  A review board which is very reputable.
I agree it would be better if a private outside agency or government agency conducted the study, but this hasnt happened yet and maybe never will, so the next best thing is to fund the study yourself.



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