Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

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What!? Are you kidding me? You think it is some kind of miracle that a black man can be altruistic?

I agree with Nil; note the context.  It was the justaposition of their (helper and helpee) respective cultural and familial heritages that made the circumstance so noteworthy.  Only incidental if either one of them realized it.

I suppose. I read the post again and it doesn't explicitly say that the black mechanic knew the guys name or background. Niles knew. But it does not say the mechanic knew. So I figured he did not.

And, I still don't see why a black man would be more or less adverse than anyone else to assisting a Nazi.

Why send the brilliant kids to a shitty school to make the shitty school look better, without actually spending any effort on the neighborhood kids?

Its underhanded man! Why can't we go to a new school or at least one that is on par anyway? Why send us to the shittiest one to make the shitty one look better by spreading us on top of the problem there?

The neighborhood kids didn't get anything out of it, but the school didnt look like a shitty inner-city one anymore, because me and the other braniacs were being showed off while the warehoused kids were kept out of the limelight, basically.

I'm sorry but I don't like being turd polish for the wake county public school system...

Apparently, I did, in fact, miss something.

The Who wrote

Typically kids don?t share their secrets to everyone in high school, I agree, but these kids are there for a reason and have issues that need to be addressed. The sharing of their experiences brought them all closer together as friends

These issues do not need to be addressed in a room full of other children. I think is abhorrent that children should be required to expose their sexual experiences to other children. I would the opposite should hold true. I would not want my child to hear these detailed horror stories.

I remember the Brat Camp episode where a girl was confronted with her history of being sexually molested, not just in front of the entire group of children, but on national television. I was shocked and outraged that this could even be legal. The press does not normally report the names of victims of sexual crimes to protect these people.

Once again, I refer to the recent case of the two Missouri boys who were abducted. All of the psychologists and experts insist they should not be pressured into talking about their experiences. I did not hear one dissenting opinion that they should be confronted and forced to deal with their issues.

Also, in a room full of dysfunctional children, is there no concern that these children will come to think that being dysfunctional is normal? How about being in a school full of dysfunctional children? Without exposure to 'normal' people, how are these kids supposed to see what that looks like?

I find it interesting that someone might take the stand that 'brainwashing' does not exist in light of the recent cases of Elizabeth Smart and Shawn Hornbeck. Both could have escaped at any time, having both means and opportunity. Psychologists via the media have bent over backwards to say these victims should not be judged, citing the psychological hold the captors had over these individuals.

The existence of cults also demonstrates how charismatic people can use coercive - persuasion to recruit and hold followers. Jonestown, Charles Manson, David Koresh, and the Heaven's Gate cult are all examples.

I grew up in the 1970s when the Krishnas and Moonies where making press with their recruiting and hold tactics. Parents were hiring deprogrammers to kidnap their children out of these organizations.

The so-called human potential movement (est, Lifespring) had their day in court and the courts found them guilty of psychologically damaging participants.

It seems to me that the phenomenon has been well documented and the debate is purely academic (definitions and formalizations).

Like The Who, Anne is a wordsmith that tries to divert the issue away from critical analysis and into rationalizations that are ultimately contradictory. Do programs screen for 'ego strength' whatever that is? Of course not. Someone with a strong ego strength would probably have a more difficult time in a program because their resistance would be stronger and more prolonged.

Programs often list ADHD and depression as things they can fix. Wouldn't these issues preclude the 'sane' or '100%' requirement? Wouldn't teens with these problems be the most vulnerable to the stresses induced by these techniques?

As for psychologists endorsing this, remember that there are psychologists who still back 'rebirthing' therapy for attachment disorder. A degree and license are no guarantee of sound judgement.

Finally, she attacks Margret Singer as thinking 'everything' is brainwashing. Ridiculous.

A clinician, researcher, and educator, Dr. Singer was the first woman and first clinical psychologist elected president of the American Psychosomatic Society. She has been honored by the American Psychiatric Association, American College of Psychiatrists, Mental Health Association, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, National Institute of Mental Health, American Family Therapy Association, and many others. She is a professor emeritus in psychology of the University of California, Berkeley.

She seems pretty sound to me. Keep in mind that her detractors most often come from the organizations accused of using the methods in question.

http://www.religio.de/server/statement.html

Finally, the fact that Anne endorses the Forum (I have attended a Forum event) reduces her credibility in my opinion. My friends and I who attended the Forum joked about our 'cult' experience. We never bought into it. We took it in as bad theater and dismissed it as soon as we left as being the most idiotic event we ever witnessed. We considered it a scam. We still do.

If Anne buys the Forum, she has sipped Kool-Aid and is only parroting the party line.

Psy, don't give these people the benefit of the doubt, they are good at talking in the same way duplicitous politicians are. There ideas have no credibility and are scientifically unsound.

Thinking about the responses above, it occurred to me that we cannot discuss this without considering motive. People consider suicide for many different reasons:

1. To escape the pain of a terminal illness. This is the one form of suicide legal in some places.

2. To escape the pain of clinical depression. This may or may not be treatable by medication. The patient may or may not appreciate the interference of others. One could argue that intervention here is similar to saving the sick person's life by taking them to ER.

3. To escape situational depression. These people see little hope to escape their current situation which is so emotionally taxing that they are willing to kill themselves just to end the pain. Interference in this case, could just mean keeping them alive until the intensity of the emotion wears off.

4. To get even with the living. Kids might threaten to kill themselves so their parents 'will be sorry' for treating them in whatever fashion they are treating them. In this case, suicide is an act of agression. It is a big 'fuck you' to the living or to society. I would expect most these attempts or threats to be bluffs, but some may be serious and once again, intervention is just holding the person until the anger and frustration pass.

5. To escape oppression. This is complicated. Does the convict serving a life sentence attempt suicide as a result of situational depression or as an escape from society's control (could be both). Anyone under incarceration (especially if prolonged or accompanied by abuse) may try suicide as a means of escape. Hey it's one way to get out of a program, if you can pull it off. Someone may consider society itself so oppressive that suicide is the only escape from the oppression of society (read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley).

I think the terminally ill and the person escaping oppression are two situations where the person is making a rational choice guided by free will. Those people who forcibly prevent their suicide are simply oppressors. In my world view, individual rights generally trump society's, so I would say, "Let 'em do it."

When I spoke of restraint, I was not thinking of someone who grabs a person off a ledge or takes the gun away until the moment goes away. I was concerned with long term incarceration involving strait jackets, four point restraints, forced medication, and suicide watches. To me, this in an infringement on a person's free will. This is society oppressing someone with a different world view.

This may sound odd to some, but the person who I think should never be restrained or prevented from suicide is the one making the attempt as the big 'fuck you' to the living or to society. This person is making a statement of their own free will. Forcing this person to live is an act of oppression. This individual's right to determine their own existence trumps the grief of those left behind.[/u]

The last link I posted has an entire section on youth suicide. I just spent the past half hour reading through some it. Some of it is pretty good material from an academic perspective.

Quote from: ""AtomicAnt""

Do you honestly think I would use the phrase "peaches and cream" without being facetious?

I went to school in the 1970s in a small town in the middle of no where. I did not attend school in a ghetto, which I am sure would be much different. The point that you missed is that the kids in programs tend to come from middle class families. They are not inner city kids in these programs. If they were, there would be more violence, riots, and escapes at these programs.

The point is there is no valid comparison between PS and programs. You're comparing onions and oranges.

Good point AA -- I think this would mostly explain the difference or lack of homicides in TBS's but I think the suicide rates would be spread out throughout all regions (inner city and suburbia).  Maybe higher in the suburbs, who knows.  My daughter had a kid in her peer group from an inner city public school, but this may not be the norm.
So I don?t think the homicide stats will raise an eyebrow among parents because most are not concerned with their child being killed but more that their child will die as a result of the "at risk behavior" they are involved with.  But the suicide rates should provide a benchmark that could be followed over time and maybe lead parents toward or away from specific TBS's.

uthorities yank youths from unsafe corrections facility

By Carol Kreck, Staff Writer

April 4 - The state of West Virginia was so concerned about the reports of abuse and a suicide at the Brush youth corrections facility that it made plans to send the governor's plane to pick up their residents.

Meanwhile, several other states with young offenders housed at the embattled High Plains Youth Center were making plans to either pull their residents or investigate the charges for themselves.

West Virginia did not even wait to learn if High Plains lost its license before officials there notified Colorado authorities of their intentions.

"West Virginia has notified us they're going to send out a plane,'' said Dwight Eisnach, spokesman for the state department of human services. "They have 15 and will take them all out. They're making arrangements to use the governor of West Virginia's plane.''

Meanwhile, all 40 Colorado youths incarcerated at High Plains were hauled out in a bus at noon Thursday and distributed among state-run youth detention centers.

Administrators at the for-profit detention center had until Friday to show why the Colorado Department of Human Services shouldn't revoke the facility's license, which would effectively shut down the facility to 115 boys from other states.

Rebound, the privately held Denver-based corporation that runs High Plains, delivered a response to Human Services executive director Barbara McDonnell late Friday afternoon explaining how they propose to be held accountable, said Rebound spokesman Tom Schilling.

There wasn't enough time on Friday for the department to review the document and make a decision, according to Eisnach.

Whether High Plains keeps its license may be irrelevant, since other states and municipalities are following Colorado's lead without waiting for a license revocation.

Nebraska, which has five kids at High Plains, was trying Friday afternoon to work out a deal with Colorado Division of Youth Corrections Director Jerry Adamek to take their kids on a short-term basis. "We're trying to find a place for them,'' Eisnach said.

Michigan is sending out an assessment team to do its own audit of the facility, he said, and "Connecticut has notified us of their concerns, but they haven't read the report yet.''

Released Wednesday, the report followed an investigation into the facility and a death by suicide there of 13-year-old Matthew Maloney of Utah on Feb. 22. It's a blistering indictment of High Plains, citing a child-abuse report rate so high that Morgan County Social Services hired a full-time worker to investigate the allegations.

As an outgrowth of the "positive peer culture'' system used at High Plains, a group of offenders called the Cougars seemed to have the run of the facility, the report said.

Staff were inadequately trained, and the staff-to-student ratio sometimes was in violation of licensure requirements. The night Maloney hanged himself, the ratio was 1 to 44 when it should have been 1 to 20, according to the report. Though Rebound officials claim more adults were in the building at the time, child-care license administrators say adult bodies don't count unless they're truly supervising youths.

In a criticism related directly to Maloney's suicide, High Plains administrators knew he had talked about killing himself - he even told them how he would do it - but warnings to keep a special eye on the boy apparently weren't conveyed to night staff.

Maloney had complained of a headache that night so staff skipped the child-care licensing requirement that workers checking on a youth's well-being actually are able to see his skin. In Maloney's case, staff checked every five minutes, but they were only checking on a lump of clothes he'd formed in the shape of a body under his bedspread.

In the meantime, he tied his bedsheets around a toilet, looped them over a shower stall and locker and hanged himself behind the locker, a spot hidden from checks through the window in his door.

Rebound operates other facilities for youths in Colorado: Grand Prairie, a facility smaller than High Plains outside Colorado Springs; the Mount Falcon boot camp at Pueblo; a group home called Adventures in Change in Denver; and they run the orientation and assessment program at Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center, a staterun facility.

The state has no plans to shut down any other Rebound facilities, Eisnach said.

Denver Post, April 4, 1998

http://www.suicidereferencelibrary.com/test4~id~570.php