The difficulty with the who's generalities about the industry is that it ignores the awful pain and suffereng experienced by all of the adolescents that were horribly harmed over the years as the industry became more sophisticated and the families that were promised they would be helped and were actually ripped asunder by an industry that said it was about kids and families but was actually about money and junk science using kids as guinea pigs and the kids and families being hurt today in theindustry's most recent incarnation. If you and your industry are serious about doing what is right let's talk about some general rules based on the law and what we know and you seem to acknowledge about adolescent development and the lack of support for facilities that abuse kids and call the abuse- therapy.
Can we agree on these fundamental principles.
1) All facilities, however they describe themselves, will provide the minimum education required in the state in which each adolescent resided before arriving at the facility. The right and obligation of adolescents to an education will be acknowledged and not treated as a privilege which must be earned.
2) Facilities, whatever they call themselves, will not seek to have health insurance pay any portions of tuition in the absence of a report for a psychiatrist who is unaffiliated with the facility, that the child has an illness that is recognized in the DSM 4 and that the facility treats in a manner consistent with the standard of care for that illness.
3) efore using the word therapy to describe any of what they do the child who is to receive the therapy will be diagnosed with a condition or an illness and the facility will represent that the therapy is appropriate for the condition or illness.
4) No facility, however they describe themselves, will accept adolescents who are picked up by transport services in the middle of the night recognizing that the use of such services is destructive to the relationship between children and their parents and is an act of cowardice and immaturity on the part of the parents.
5) Recognizing that the relationship of children with their parents is important, no facility will accept a child whose parents are divorced where the placement will impact on the non custodial parents visitation rights without first being provided with a court order permitting the placement.
6) All facilities will include in their promotional material specific details on the educational levels and certifications of all employees providing professional services. The distinction between services being provided by licensed professional and services being provided by others will be made clear.
7) All facilities will make available information about the number of adolescents admitted to the program in the past five years and the number that successfully “graduated” from the program..
All facilities will make it clear that it does not approve or tolerate physical abuse of adolescents, the use of exercise as punishment, the withholding of food or sleep as therapy or punishment, and the humiliation of adolescents as therapy.
9) All facilities will permit adolescents regular and unmonitored contact with their parents after an initial blackout period not to exceed two weeks.
10) No adolescent will be admitted to a facility based on a diagnosis contained within the DSM 4 unless they have first been treated for the condition that the facility diagnosed on an out patient basis in the community in which they live and if the diagnosis includes a disorder premised on an inability to get along with their parents the family has had a course of family therapy with a licensed therapist.
I suspect this would not work for the industry because if they followed them an industry, based on junk science, would seek to exist.
I suspect that many of these principles would not be acceptable because if they were the industry could not exist.
