Hyde tries to improve its credibility by attempting to pass off founder Joe Gauld's son in law, Don Macmillan, as a "clinician" in a promotional brochure:
In the following excerpt entitled "A View of Hyde School? From a Clinician?s Point of View" Don Macmillan writes about the primary ways in which Hyde differs from typical therapeutic boarding schools in how it handles students with cognitive, behavioral, and psychological diagnoses, such as ADD, ADHD, substance abuse, depression, anorexia, oppositional defiance disorder (ODD), etc.:
"[Therapeutic boarding schools] tend to embody a problem-solving paradigm in which diagnosed deficits are remedied. Rather than remedy deficits, Hyde seeks to build upon strengths. Hyde offers a holistic approach to personal and family growth that has often proved to coincidentally help many teenagers with issues pertaining to a given diagnosis."
So, rather than REMEDY any issues, Hyde essentially pretends that children's individual challenges and diagnoses don't exist, and so they blame, shame, ostracize, isolate, and punish children who fail to miraculously overcome them. Hyde mandates that students participate in counseling-style groups called "discovery groups" where student and multi-family therapy-type sessions are facilitated by faculty members with almost no or absolutely no training in therapy, mental health care, psychology, or social work, and all participants are pressured to divulge their darkest demons.
When Don writes about a "holistic" approach, we surmise that he is referring to Hyde's cult-like system of mandatory conformity and punishments, a distorted reality in which students and staff are required to master and use a rather simplistic, jingoistic, doctrinaire, and patronizing package of cliches and Hyde-isms to explain everything that occurs at the school. We assume that he is referring to Hyde's manufactured structure where misery or conformity are the only two options, where no licensed therapists, psychologists, or family counselors have ever been employed to help children (and also their families) through the above challenges. Over the last 15 years or so, Hyde has occasionally had one single social worker on staff.
In essence: Hyde chooses to ignore all evidence-based methods and professionals in relevant fields in favor of simply making everything they do up.
"Hyde offers a holistic approach to personal and family growth that has often proved to coincidentally help many teenagers with issues pertaining to a given diagnosis."
-*clinician* Don Macmillan
Yes, the husband of Joe Gauld's daughter, Don Macmillan did obtain a master's degree in counseling from Antioch University with a concentration in drug and alcohol counseling. However, there is no evidence that we can find in any state he would have worked in - Connecticut, Maine, or his current state of Minnesota, that he ever obtained a LICENSE to practice any kind of mental health care.
To obtain a LICENSE to practice mental health care, one must generally complete thousands of hours of counseling patients under the supervision of licensed therapists; a process that takes several years. Once licensed, a health care practitioner is overseen by a board of professionals to ensure they are following scientific and ethical standards, and clients/patients may file formal complaints. Having a LICENSE means that a clinician is held ACCOUNTABLE by a group of professionals for their actions. It's been observed, of course, that the family who runs Hyde has never been keen on having any outside accountability for themselves, even though their marketing materials and scripted pitches may suggest differently.
A clinician is a professional health care provider who works directly with patients in their field of expertise. Can anyone explain how Hyde gets away with representing the son in law of the school's founder, who possesses very little proper training and no licensure, who as far as we know has never worked with children in any sort of medical setting, and who is accountable to no licensing board, as a "clinician"?
Original fb post:
https://www.facebook.com/hydeschoolsurvivors/photos/a.109515974590751/210599737815707From one Hyde survivor, in response:
And listen, as someone who went to school for counseling, got my masters, went through the whole supervision process, and got licensed, I can confidently say that graduate programs usually prepare counseling trainees pretty well for careers as therapists. I had a pretty good grasp on my job during my period of supervision, pre-license. But it doesn't mean I was able to just ignore ethics and practice on my own. On top of that, Don is one of those people with a counseling degree who is DEFINITELY not ready for independent practice upon graduation. I truly don't understand how anyone could finish 6+ years of school, plus internship, and still think that Hyde practices were in any way therapeutic or beneficial to children. It just blows my mind.
