Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Second Nature Wilderness Program
Anonymous:
12 WEEKS out of 20 years! Hardly shirking my parental duties. She's had plently of time post WT to grow up. She wanted to go! She has no PTSD. I'm sorry Eudora, but saving her from her physically abusive boyfriend and a burgeoning cocaine habit (or the PTSD from it)was more important to me than sitting back and doing nothing. That would have been the wrong thing to do. Talk about shirking your parental duties!
Anonymous:
Ok, DJ you make some valid points. I realize that my kid's success may be an anomaly. Julie, I think, has her heart in the right place but is blinded by arrogance and an "it won't happen to me" mentality. One anon obviously hates Julie and is cynical. Another anon likes the program and occasionally weighs in to keep this thread balanced. Eudora obviously has had a bad experience and I'm sorry for her. But, my last word is that Second Nature Wilderness Program is a good place with a safe record, a talented, educated staff and lots of former parents and students that believe in it. That's where this started and that where I'm signing off. I'm not going to beat this dead horse. Though it was fun realizing yet one more time that I did the right thing and wasn't a wasted afternoon defending my decision and the program.
Anonymous:
Oh, one more thing Eudora. My brother died when he was 17 as my parents sat back and waited for him to grow up. I was not going to let history repeat itself with trying something different. My father was of the "boys will be boys" school of thought. Guess what? We (all of my surviving brothers and sisters) have PTSD from our parents watching him die.
TheWho:
--- Quote ---On 2006-03-22 14:06:00, Dysfunction Junction wrote:
"
--- Quote ---You guys can't keep making assumptions that sending a kid to WT or TBS is the first thing a parent does the first time their kid smokes a joint or snorts a line.
--- End quote ---
I've only gone by what you said. I haven't assumed anything really. I've read what you wrote and commented on what you said.
In any case, I think you are quick to insult others due to what you perceive to be an attack on you when people ask questions and ask you to justify what you say with facts. It's a touchy subject and people don't like to go into details. I understand that to an extent.
I have said it before that I'm glad that your kid is doing better. Who could be upset with a happy, functioning child?
What I object to is that places that use these types of "programs" don't tell the truth about their approach to "treatment." Now. I'm not saying that your program has done this - I wouldn't know. What I do know, however, is that they advertise that they can treat various psychological/social disorders. They advertise that they are successful, yet there is not a single shred of evidence to support this claim.
I can say this universally about all of these programs simply because I stay current on the research being conducted and there is not a single, solitary clinical trial for "wilderness programs" that indicates that they can successfully treat anything whatsoever. Current research indicates that these programs are at best ineffective and at worst damaging.
Mental health treatment must always be conducted under the least restrictive conditions possible. This is a general rule of the discipline. Sending a child to one of these programs against their will is counterintuitive the "least restrictive" philosophy.
Their going voluntarily is rare and is usually coerced or in some cases the children are "kidnapped" from their beds in the middle of the night by paid "escorts" who handcuff your kid and drag him/her from the house in handcuffs, against their will, to be forcibly transported to the program - for a fee, of course.
My point about this has been that if your kid required out of home placement (dangerous to self or others - well below 1% of all cases) then he/she is in need of a level of care that a WP simply cannot deliver.
I'm not saying that there aren't some people in this industry who have good intentions and are trying to help kids.
What I'm saying is that these places, based on the least restrictive care model, are accepting children whose placement there is unwarranted (many) or even dangerous (very few). I'm saying that they're in business to sell a product - like every business sells a product to make profit - and the product they're selling isn't therapy for the kids, it's hope for the parents and it's wrong.
"
--- End quote ---
DJ, I dont totally agree, but that was a well thought out balanced argument, void of any anger. I agree with anon, You made some valid viewpoints.
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2006-03-22 15:45:00, TheWho wrote:
DJ, I dont totally agree, but that was a well thought out balanced argument, void of any anger. I agree with anon, You made some valid viewpoints. "
--- End quote ---
Well slap me silly, we agree! Is there an eclipse tonight or something? :em:
DJ. Once again, DJ, I am awed by your ability to elevate any discussion. If I ever find the way to turn Fornits into obscene profitability, you'll be my first ever paid moderator on damned near any topic you may choose. You can take that and three fity to the nearest Starbucks! LOL
Couple of questions for you:
"
--- Quote ---
On 2006-03-22 14:06:00, Dysfunction Junction wrote:
Mental health treatment must always be conducted under the least restrictive conditions possible. This is a general rule of the discipline.
--- End quote ---
Where can I find some good solid hostorical context for that? Seriously. I hold a pretty strong fidelity to the idea because it fits well w/ my own personal experience and philosophy. But how did the psyche profession/industries come around to this conclusion?
--- Quote ---Their going voluntarily is rare and is usually coerced or in some cases the children are "kidnapped" from their beds in the middle of the night by paid "escorts" who handcuff your kid and drag him/her from the house in handcuffs, against their will, to be forcibly transported to the program - for a fee, of course.
My point about this has been that if your kid required out of home placement (dangerous to self or others - well below 1% of all cases) then he/she is in need of a level of care that a WP simply cannot deliver.
--- End quote ---
What are the expected and less common effects of this sort of experience? We've talked to death the perceived risks of not sending your kid off. And everyone in this thread agrees, I think, that Randal Hinton or Bay County Boot Camp type "therapy" is unkosher.
But what about the impact of just being a captive? In the Stanford Prison Experiment, they took some pains to realistically simulate the experience of becoming a prisoner. Even though the participants, both guards and inmates, were college student volunteers and fully aware that they were just playing a role in an experiment, they had to pull the plug on the project after just a couple of weeks due to the way it was effecting some of the subjects and even the clinical staff observers.
Just how desperate do you have to be to think this is an acceptable risk? I think the parents just don't know the risk. How could they? Most of them have never been arrested, held captive or subject to the constant stress of communal life in an authoritarian TC setting. How could they know?
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor
--- End quote ---
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