Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village
DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run
SEKTO:
Recently, for diagnostic purposes, I have undergone a full battery of neuro-psychological testing. This being done, I now know conclusively that I am a person on the autistic spectrum. The one test that was, to me, the most memorable was called ADOS.
http://portal.wpspublish.com/portal/pag ... ema=PORTAL
The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) is the "gold standard" for assessing and diagnosing autism and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) across ages, developmental levels, and language skills.
I was also given the WAIS, the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ), the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a battery of purely neurological testing, (the names of which I cannot recall), and as well went through a semi-structured interview with a neuropsychiatrist.
After all this stuff was evaluated, it was determined (long story short) that I meet criteria set by the designers of the ADOS and the other tests that would place my brain somewhere on the the jumble of developmental syndromes known collectively as "autism spectrum disorders." I have now been conclusively diagnosed.
Just today, as a matter of fact, I was given an fMRI scan, which entailed my being placed in the chamber and given a series of "moral reasoning tasks," as well as certain protocols measuring my capacity for self-referential thought; also I performed episodic and semantic memory-related tasks. I was in that damn chamber for over an hour and a half.
On a screen were described to me different scenarios, and then I was asked questions pertaining to the ethics of the situation being described. This, while scientists were looking at different areas of my brain and how they "lit up" according to the responses I gave. "Is Bobby forbidden to give Suzy the ham sandwich, or is he allowed to?" It was that kind of thing, up to progressively more and more ethically ambiguous situations.
My point is, this: if I had been diagnosed twenty years ago, and placed in the care of competent therapists, then the whole trajectory of the rest of my life would probably have been much, much different (in a good way). No, instead I was placed in DAYTOP and they did little other than try and do their damndest to try and get me to "act normal." "We do not like the way you are behaving, so stop it or else." No referalls, no evaluations, no nothing, just lots of encounter groups and humiliation. I came out of DAYTOP with and deeply instilled and constantly reinforced sense that there was something very wrong with me. The DAYTOP "counselors" used to laugh and call me a "space cadet" who fried his brain with too much acid. That was their explanation for why I was so different from the rest of the kids, too much acid. It outrages me that none of the DAYTOP "counseling" personnel back in my time there were in any way, shape, or form trained or degreed counselors. If I had been in residential or else some other and even more confrontational program, then who knows, I might not have made in this far in life. It grieves me deeply to think of "what might have been." Every day I gain more insight into just how much damage was done to me in DAYTOP. It was like badly botched surgery. DAYTOP was a toxic environment for somebody like me to have been in, toxic for anybody, but for me the exposure to that milieu was the equivalent of being given psychological Thalidomide. The experience was downright psychologically disfiguring, and the scars will never go away; I will heal, and am healing, but the scars will remain. For somebody like me, with a profound PDD, it was devastating. But the hell of it is, for the longest time, I was grateful to them. And to top it all off, I did not ever begin to recognize what had happened in there until over fifteen years after the fact. This revelation came to me after a few months at MH. There, while doing reading on identity formation and boundaries, and thinking about my early life, I had that AHA! moment, and finally saw DAYTOP for what it is: essentially a sobriety cult which employs thought-reform techniques in order to manipulate children.
DAYTOP did me (us) great harm in the long run. And it makes me very sad inside.
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: "SEKTO" ---Recently, for diagnostic purposes, I have undergone a full battery of neuro-psychological testing. This being done, I now know conclusively that I am a person on the autistic spectrum. The one test that was, to me, the most memorable was called ADOS.
http://portal.wpspublish.com/portal/pag ... ema=PORTAL
The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) is the "gold standard" for assessing and diagnosing autism and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) across ages, developmental levels, and language skills.
I was also given the WAIS, the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ), the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a battery of purely neurological testing, (the names of which I cannot recall), and as well went through a semi-structured interview with a neuropsychiatrist.
After all this stuff was evaluated, it was determined (long story short) that I meet criteria set by the designers of the ADOS and the other tests that would place my brain somewhere on the the jumble of developmental syndromes known collectively as "autism spectrum disorders." I have now been conclusively diagnosed.
Just today, as a matter of fact, I was given an fMRI scan, which entailed my being placed in the chamber and given a series of "moral reasoning tasks," as well as certain protocols measuring my capacity for self-referential thought; also I performed episodic and semantic memory-related tasks. I was in that damn chamber for over an hour and a half.
On a screen were described to me different scenarios, and then I was asked questions pertaining to the ethics of the situation being described. This, while scientists were looking at different areas of my brain and how they "lit up" according to the responses I gave. "Is Bobby forbidden to give Suzy the ham sandwich, or is he allowed to?" It was that kind of thing, up to progressively more and more ethically ambiguous situations.
My point is, this: if I had been diagnosed twenty years ago, and placed in the care of competent therapists, then the whole trajectory of the rest of my life would probably have been much, much different (in a good way). No, instead I was placed in DAYTOP and they did little other than try and do their damndest to try and get me to "act normal." "We do not like the way you are behaving, so stop it or else." No referalls, no evaluations, no nothing, just lots of encounter groups and humiliation. I came out of DAYTOP with and deeply instilled and constantly reinforced sense that there was something very wrong with me. The DAYTOP "counselors" used to laugh and call me a "space cadet" who fried his brain with too much acid. That was their explanation for why I was so different from the rest of the kids, too much acid. It outrages me that none of the DAYTOP "counseling" personnel back in my time there were in any way, shape, or form trained or degreed counselors. If I had been in residential or else some other and even more confrontational program, then who knows, I might not have made in this far in life. It grieves me deeply to think of "what might have been." Every day I gain more insight into just how much damage was done to me in DAYTOP. It was like badly botched surgery. DAYTOP was a toxic environment for somebody like me to have been in, toxic for anybody, but for me the exposure to that milieu was the equivalent of being given psychological Thalidomide. The experience was downright psychologically disfiguring, and the scars will never go away; I will heal, and am healing, but the scars will remain. For somebody like me, with a profound PDD, it was devastating. But the hell of it is, for the longest time, I was grateful to them. And to top it all off, I did not ever begin to recognize what had happened in there until over fifteen years after the fact. This revelation came to me after a few months at MH. There, while doing reading on identity formation and boundaries, and thinking about my early life, I had that AHA! moment, and finally saw DAYTOP for what it is: essentially a sobriety cult which employs thought-reform techniques in order to manipulate children.
DAYTOP did me (us) great harm in the long run. And it makes me very sad inside.
--- End quote ---
The MRI was not around twenty years ago, sure wish it was there for ya buddy. At least you have been diagnosed and maybe some good can come from this for you.
:shamrock:
Danny........
Inculcated:
You’re off on your time lines again Danny Bennison. Not that it would’ve helped much for a non neurotypical kid being immersed in Daytop’s program fifteen years ago.
Understandably your knowledge of Daytop’s intake and treatment practices is also limited.
The larger point that you’ve missed here is that at Daytop no considerations toward developing an individual treatment plan for SEKTO were made. Daytop’s program by its very nature caused lasting harm to SEKTO in particular, because no considerations were made for his being non neurotypical. They targeted any differences in him as being character flaws and reduced them to damaging labels, while imposing on him a demand to accept these labels and conform.
Inculcated:
SEKTO: I’m very glad you’re feeling empowered by the acknowledgement and support you’re getting along with your developing understanding.
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "Inculcated" ---You're off on your time lines again Danny Bennison.
--- End quote ---
Sorry, I believe you are in error to imply that the Materials Research Institute at Penn State (first link) was in any way involved with the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which is what Sekto was referring to...
Your second link was more spot-on. Nevertheless, from the time-line given, it is difficult to appreciate when MRIs were, for all practical purposes, already in routine use on humans, e.g., in a hospital setting. To that end, I will add that I personally toured an MRI facility that was operating as part of a hospital setting back in 1985 or 86. So it was certainly before then.
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