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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry
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ok people, i have read the things you have written. this is katie. i am an 18 year old who struggles alot. thinking about it i am in an undeniable way afraid to do things after the program. for the first few months i was afraid to even look at or talk with boys. At the "program" we were seperated and told that it was bad for us to interact. i am still afraid of many things, such as the fact that in july i turn 19 and i will have to get an aprtment. i am scared so much. sometimes i wonder if there is an actual place for me in the world. i have made mistakes. throughout the program i learned things, i saw things, and yes I was physically restrained. i still remeber the staff joking about the isolation room as "happy land". i was in that room 6 times. The first few months were very difficult and were hard on me. i still hold alot of guilt over my head becuase of "wasting my parents money". Not only do my parents feel as if it was a waste of time and money, but they feel as if it could be better spent on our family or my older's brothers/ stepsisters college.
Right now, seeing my own words on the blog scares me. What if my parent see them? will there be al hell to pay? I am not afraid of saying what i feel... but i am afraid of what Diane will do. (OH! I have not caled her a bitch or any rude names in months by the way, i am trying to stay out of the line of fire...) In all honesty i do love her. She is the only mother i have ever known and, she has really taken a risk to be in my life. i have not been the best step daughter... but i do love her. Even now, when i tell her this she ignores me and it breaks my heart... For my daddy, he is the best dad anyone could ask for... he has fought for me all if my life... he saved me from my biological mother, but he has led me into the relationship with Diane.
I will be posting comments of my opinions and story daily starting with this. If you wish i will do an autobiography fro those of you who want to watch out for the warnign signs. But please know this: I love my family. Even though it hurts me to say this i feel as if things would be better for them if i were not around ( In which i am reminded of quite often) for those of you who want to comment feel free to do so, but know that i will not tollerate abuse of any kind. I want people to know my thoughts or feelings, so tomorrow our journey thorugh my life will begin.
Thanks for reading.Please any comments or questions email me @ Kazzie2008@hotmail.com[/color]
Let’s see.
:waaaa: I left off, the summer I met Christy. Looking wherever I could for friends, I found some. I began hanging out with people who were different. People like me. At the beginning we were innocent teenagers, watching movies, laughing making stupid jokes, and then we began to grow up. After a while Christy and I both were having issues with our lives, so like everyone in this world we held onto something that was not changing. Each other.
I found Christy cutting herself with a razor blade one day after letting myself into her house. I began to cry to see her hurting like that. She explained it was the only way to get rid of her pain. Looking for any escape I could, I tried it. The first cut was the hardest. I couldn’t believe the relief as I saw the droplets of my own blood forming on my arm. I felt so relieved. Over and over again, I cut until I didn’t feel the jabbing pain inside of my chest from my broken heart.
After that first day, I went home I sat at the dining room table trying to hide my arms. I didn’t want anyone to know. I was reading a book tucking my arms under my sleeves. Unfortunately it was a white shirt and they still bled. Walking up behind me Diane saw the blood. She didn’t say anything to me but she went and whispered to my dad. I didn’t suspect that they knew. As I got up my dad did also. He grabbed my arms, not only pulling up the sleeves of my shirt but opening the temporary scabs. He looked at me as if I were Satan. “If you EVER do this again we are going to have you committed to an insane asylum” he said. I began to cry. Diane looked at me, and said “Do you understand how serious this is? Are you trying to make this family more stressed because of you?” every word dripped with disdain. I rant to my room. I wanted to hide forever.
I cried myself to sleep for the few moments I was cutting I was not hurting, and they didn’t understand. The next day, I went over to Christy’s and told her about what had happened. She was the only one who understood my pain. Our routine began. We hung out, and then if we needed it cut. We did everything together. This continued for a few months. After a while the cuts became more frequent and deeper, and I no longer was with Christy when I cut myself. I did it on my legs, thighs upper arms stomach.
After a while Christy began getting into drugs. Weed, coke, shrooms. I was so scared to even touch the stuff. However I found myself content with cigarettes, and alcohol. I was with Christy almost every spare minute I had. Sneaking out to go to parties, walking around neighbourhoods all night. We were the rebellious teenagers, more so her than me. I got contact high quite a few times, but as I said before I was scared shitless to really use.
The excitement of it all was wearing off. Cutting wasn’t working anymore, and people began to notice all I wore was baggy sweaters to hide the cuts and scars. I was bored and I wanted to join in with my friends. I began huffing Lysol and paint. The first few times it was nice. Then one day Christy passed out. I couldn’t wake her up, so I did what anyone would do. I called 911. the hospital was a nightmare. Not only was I scared but my parents were called. At that point my dad came and got me. He made me tell him everything about what I had been doing. I was terrified. I was forbidden to see Christy.
The situation worsened I lied more and more to se her. I stole money for her. I wanted her friendship so bad I let her take advantage of me, and soon it turned ugly. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and after being made fun of at school I didn’t want to take it anymore. I went up to my room and wrote notes to all of my friends. I wanted to die. I went down to the living room and sat on the couch. I began to cut myself, daring myself to do it. I wanted it so bad, and the cuts were only the shallow ones. It wasn’t working. My dad walked into the house just as I got up to try another way. I grabbed my med box and almost had the pills down when my dad forcibly got them out of my mouth. He called the ambulance.
Since I hadn’t ingested any of the pills, I was taking to a psychiatric ward called KHYS. An outpatient program for kids who had tried to commit suicide. I was there for 2 ½ weeks. It was scary. White walls, limited visits. I was given different heavier medication to help with the depression. My family visited me every night bringing McDonalds and games, trying to make everything better. I thought it was a genuine attempt at fixing our family. But unfortunately it didn’t last. My dad was there the entire time. I felt a new respect for him, and I began to heal superficially. The meds made me a zombie once I took them and knocked me out at night. I was more calm and less expressive. I was discharged. I went home. I did well for a few weeks, until the things went back to the way before. The second time around things got much much worse. :waaaa: ::OMG::
Again i thank you to everyone who will read this and i will write more tomorrow. this was hard for me to write so need support if you can give it.
Please any comments or questions you know how to reach me
Kazzie2008@hotmail.com
1. Be honest, authentic, and real.
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5. Maintain strict confidentiality of everything discussed in group. “What is seen here, what is heard here, remains here!”
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9. Say “I love you _____” after each person is finished relating.
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12. Do not be defensive. While being spoken to, one may not respond to defend him/herself or return confrontation to the person speaking.
13. If one needs to leave the group for any reason, he/she must ask permission from the staff in charge of the group session.
14. Stand when speaking, relating, or being related to. During general raps, one must stand while relating. One must also stand when someone is being given feedback or being related to. Standing is not necessary during teaching raps.
Clients are expected to give back. This includes watching out for one’s brothers and sisters. It also includes the initiative of upper-phasers to provide accountability for lower-phasers.
CBC: So AARC, your involvement with them was to supervise a grad student who was doing the study?
PATTON: That’s right.
CBC: Or who was I should say analyzing the data?
PATTON: Analyzing the data, yes. We didn’t do the study, and he didn’t do the study. What he did was analyze the data…
CBC: So how did you end up being involved with them then?... Was it just that they contracted you to do that evaluation?...
PATTON: They knew me from my writings on evaluation—I’ve written textbooks about evaluation—and contacted me. And right at that moment I had this graduate student whose field of study was chemical dependency.
CBC: And they were interested in doing this study, and they just wanted your professional involvement I guess.
PATTON: That’s right. They were looking for a professional evaluator to analyze the data, and chemical dependency evaluation is not my specialty. I’m a generalist evaluator. And I’ve written general textbooks about evaluation. But when they called I had this graduate student for whom this seemed like a perfect project. He was working on his dissertation at the time. And this was a way for him to use his expertise and get some additional support at the end of his doctoral program. And so I agreed to supervise him to do the analysis.
CBC: Right, okay. And did you or your grad student, were you involved in designing the study or helping them design the study? Or is it just the evaluation part?
PATTON: They developed the instrument. I reviewed the instrument with him [his grad student] to be sure that the analysis could be done. And it looked fairly straightforward. He went to Edmonton and spent two or three days up there as part of putting this together. And I actually don’t remember what all he did.
It was clear that our role was not to validate the program or endorse the program in any way. And that’s not what the report does. In fact, you’ll note that the report very carefully describes it as an outcomes study only. So there’s nothing that he was involved in or that I was involved in, in actually looking at the model that they do. We had no involvement with that. There’s no documentation of the model.
There was no direct contact in data gathering in the instrument. So it was to review that the questions were appropriate questions for an outcome study. And then they gathered the data, and he analyzed it with a colleague at Hazelden Foundation.
CBC: Okay. Were you involved in evaluating the data itself?
PATTON: We provided them with the analysis that is the centrepiece of the report, that is how the results came out. I remember adding to the limitations section, which I cited to you yesterday, trying to be careful that the report was not inappropriately used. And so that was my main contribution. But the data analysis that’s presented in that outcome study is right out of the results that they sent to Hazelden.
CBC: Okay. So the study then—who wrote the words that are the bulk of it that we see there? I have just seen the version that I sent to you, and I assume that it looks pretty much like what you have I guess?
PATTON: Yes.
CBC: Is it…
PATTON: Yes.
CBC: … pretty much the same thing?
PATTON: I mean the findings are descriptive findings for the most part—this is what the data said. As I recall there was some back and forth in the final writing about how much was going to be in it and what. So that there are, what, three or four names listed on it, and I presume everybody did some of the writing. I certainly reviewed it, especially adding to the limitations section. But the focus is on what the followup results were, as reported in the questionnaire and interviews, and so it is not more than that.
It’s not a—there are always difficulties in this kind of self-reporting. It is common in evaluation in general and chemical dependency programs specifically to have the problem of relying upon what people tell you after the fact.
So this doesn’t include independent validation of that. I remember that there were some parents contacted where they couldn’t reach the kids. And of course that’s another source of data, but that’s subject to its own problems. So I would treat it as a fairly modest study that is one part of a bigger puzzle, not as a definitive piece of work, as I told you yesterday.
* * *
CBC: It occurred to me that because some of the kids there are court-ordered and would have been on probation and part of their probation condition is that they attend there, now if they are being interviewed by someone from the program, would they have perhaps a bias or an incentive to underreport substance abuse…
PATTON: Sure.
CBC: … because in that case they could have trouble with the court?
PATTON: All the kids could have incentives for underreporting. They want to please the program staff if they have relationships with them. They know what outcome they’re supposed to report. They want to show that they’ve done well. In some cases, people actually believe that they’re doing better than they are. They’re in denial themselves about their use patterns. There’s the problem you mentioned of the court. That’s all the problem with self-reporting data. There are lots of reasons why self-report data are a first level, the very first thing you do to see how it looks on the surface.
There are studies where the self-report data are bad enough that you say, “Well, it’s not worth going to a lot of trouble to validate it because the self-report data are weak.”
And self-report data work best where the data are gathered anonymously by independent people, where there’s no incentive to worry about. And you know, it gets harder with kids to understand what it means when they’re told that they won’t be identified as individuals, that their data will only be aggregated with other kids, that nobody will know what their responses are. And they sign consent forms saying that they understand all of that. But you don’t really know if they trust that.
CBC: In this case was it done anonymously?
PATTON: Well, it can’t be done anonymously because they’re interviews.
CBC: Oh, there were interviews in this case.
PATTON: Yeah.
CBC: It wasn’t anonymous interviews.
PATTON: No.