One of the reasons why desperate parents (and desperate kids) sometimes do benefit from Hyde or stay at Hyde for as long as they do is because life at home is not pretty. The yelling in seminars can seem appropriate compared to the yelling at home, and having an environment that is fairly predictable can provide stability to a family that has completely fallen apart. If the home life is bad enough, Hyde can be the first place where people feel safe and feel cared for. There are faculty who take a true interest in the kids, and there is a feeling of a community in which, attacked or not, every person exists. I'm saying this because I went to Hyde when my family life was horrible. We had many issues, some of which my family dealt with semi-privately in seminars, and some of which we did not deal with at all.
I left Hyde with different problems, some of which developed there or were exacerbated by that environment. I became even more self-critical. I felt ashamed about every little mistake I made and took criticism too personally for many years. It made me fear public scrutiny and try to proactively avoid "mistakes" that would bring me negative attention, even if I disagreed that those decisions were mistakes... That said, Hyde was the best alternative for me at the time if the alternative was living at home. I cannot say what would have happened if I had gone to another program. I can say that I was living in a private hell at home. My family pathologized me, blamed me for everything, and verbally abused me. If I had not gone to Hyde, I would have gotten pregnant, run away from home, or killed myself-- I was that miserable. For me, Hyde was my great escape. My parents only let me go because the parent program assuaged their guilt for sending me away.
I am grateful that Hyde did not pepper me with psychological labels. I do not see myself as damaged goods now, although I have sought the help of mental health professionals from time to time to make sure I am dealing with my issues. I think that if I had been in an environment that called me a crazy kid, it would have been just another attack on a person who was already under fire. I found seminars helpful if my family talked about their reactions to things and not specifics. When families end up discussing specifics, some of these topics are inappropriate for that environment, but no one was told to gauge that boundary, which is and was scary. I do see that for some people, it was a totally unhealthy environment, and even for people who benefitted from Hyde, there are some definite negative effects. I would not send my own kids to Hyde, and yet it is a place to which I feel eternally grateful... it is a strange dichotomy, but I feel that if I ever have kids, I won't treat them badly enough that they need Hyde to be their safe space.
Hyde's current state makes me really sad. I think that it is useful to talk about character issues. It is not useful to be forced to share every self-examination in a public forum, but the questions Hyde raises could be helpful in and of themselves. I am angry at Hyde for forcing me to be in an environment that was intensely drug-focused-- I am not an addict of any kind-- and that made big dramatic displays all of the time as a crisis-focused school.
I do think that the ethics are appropriate for high school students, that having students participate in sports & performing arts is a good opportunity for raising a balanced kid, etc. I like that there is a tight-knit community within Hyde of people who do really care, and for me, my experiences with those people were much more common than the ones with the overly-aggressive faculty. It really is a love-hate relationship. I think I will always feel conflicted about Hyde. It is a strange place, for sure. I wish that Hyde would deal with its gross-oversights in its application of its own principles so that people could benefit from what it has to offer, instead of needing to recover from it afterwards. I also think that I would not be who I am today without having had to struggle through all of the moral nuances it intentionally and unintentionally provides.
