Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Behrens Study vs. ASTART Debate thread
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).
psy:
--- Quote from: "blombrowski" ---True, I was never in an organized thought reform program. But surely long-term childhood institutionalization has to count for something?
--- End quote ---
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.
Whooter:
--- 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.
--- End quote ---
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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Whooter:
--- 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).
--- End quote ---
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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blombrowski:
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)
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