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Messages - Timoclea

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46
The Troubled Teen Industry / Boonville police urge caution on Kemper
« on: April 15, 2005, 03:12:00 PM »
I do know that if you really wanted to you could hem them in with enough deed restrictions that they would *have* to keep their promises or have the deed revert to the city and the city get to keep the money and the buildings on the land, etc.

You could also put in that if there's a lawsuit over the contract, the buyer(s) or the people they sell to have to pay legal expenses and court costs if they lose.

You could also put it in that non-enforcement of contract provisions doesn't waive the right to enforce them, or to enforce them at a later date.

To get that bit to hold up, you'd probably have to say the city would have a time limit on a specific breach of contract to pursue it for two years with the clock starting not when the breach occurred but instead when the city found out about the specific violation asserted as a breach.

It would probably be much easier to enforce all this if instead of selling the property outright the city insisted on a long-term lease with option to renew.  Peg the lease renewal amount to the federally determined annual rate of inflation.

It probably makes more sense all around, if the city has concerns---which it darned well should have----for it to insist on leasing the property instead of selling it.

You could have the city able to terminate the lease if Kemper breached the terms.

You could have the city be able to refuse to renew the lease *either* if Kemper breached the terms *or* if the city paid a set fee, indexed to inflation, in lieu of giving Kemper the option to renew.

It's narrowly possible, barely possible, that Hinton wants to get out of the "troubled teen" industry and run a conventional military school.

But I doubt it.

If he does, though, he should be willing to ensure the city ongoing lease income while assuming legal, enforceable obligation to do what he's telling the city he's going to do.

If he means his assurances, he won't have any problem putting them in writing.

It's better for the city to get ongoing income from the property than sell it and get a one-shot infusion of cash, anyway.  The ongoing income ultimately reduces the tax burden on the locals for the amount of services they get.

If I were a local, I'd want the lease option, anyway.

If Hinton really means what he says, why would he even remotely have a problem with that?

Timoclea

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
--Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic


47
The Troubled Teen Industry / Boonville police urge caution on Kemper
« on: April 15, 2005, 02:58:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-15 11:03:00, Antigen wrote:

"Timoclea, what about shipping the kids off to TB? How do you legally rule that out? How would you even know if they were complying w/ a measure like that?

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is
proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in
everlasting ignorance- that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
--Herbert Spencer


"


Well, I did say that the city would retain the right to inspect the facility at any time.  They'd be able to go in and check.

On Tranquility Bay, you could stipulate that the school would not transfer the children anywhere, that they could suspend or expel students, but could not release them into the custody of anyone but the custodial parent or guardian, or social services.  You could stipulate that neither the facility, nor any employee, administrator, owner, or agents or assigns of same could be the legal guardian of any child *except* the temporary in loco parentis custody inherent in schooling.  You could stipulate that if the child was suspended or expelled he or she could never be released into the custody of any staffer, administrator, owner or agent or assign of any facility, even if such person had acquired legal guardianship of the student, but would have to be released into the custody of local social services instead pending a guardianship hearing in family court.

I think disallowing transfers without directly returning the child to custodial parent or (real) guardian, or release to social services and a guardianship/custody hearing in the family court with jurisdiction over the child.  

I suppose if the family court hearing would have to legally be in a certain jurisdiction, by overriding existing law, that you'd need to have local social services transfer the child to the custody of social services in the appropriate jurisdiction.

I don't know what the lawyers would let you do towards putting that clause in--I don't know the legalities.

I do know you'd need to insert a severability clause so that if any clause in the contract was thrown out by a court, the other clauses would remain in force.

Part of the problem is that current disability law makes it so that if your kid is badly disabled, you may have to relinquish custody to the state in order to get treatment.  This is one of the provisions in the law that organizations like CABF are trying to get changed.

I guess you could put in a clause making them agree to only accept children where the custody of the child rests with a parent, adoptive parent, or blood relative.  That would keep them from getting hinky with the legal custody like BM schools sometimes do.

Timoclea

A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it.  That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
-- In the August 1993 issue, page 9, of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of preventive maintenance


48
The Troubled Teen Industry / Antigen is on the SIBS payroll
« on: April 15, 2005, 02:40:00 PM »
Maybe she has a banana split.

Hey, Ginger, do you have a banana split?  What's your recipe?  Can I have a banana split, too?

Timoclea

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
--Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author


49
The Troubled Teen Industry / CABF
« on: April 15, 2005, 02:36:00 PM »
Buzz--my doctor has actually prescribed, among the meds, supplements of omega-3 fish oil (or consumption of a lot of fish) and is on board with me about the Ginko Biloba supplement.

Diet and sleep are important.

But when you get right down to it, food is a drug.

It's just not sometimes *enough* of a drug.

And I agree with you---*competent* psychiatrists take  side effects that are severe health and wellbeing problems---like weight gain or ovarian problems---very seriously.  *Competent* psychiatrists watch patients very closely for the beginnings of emergence of side effects.  Most patients who experience bad side effects on one drug do not experience bad side effects on another drug.  This is why finding the right medication, medication combination, or dosage to stabilize each patient is a time-consuming process as the doctor begins with the most likely safe and effective drug, gets it up to the therapeutic dose, and monitors to see how the patient does.  Then, if the patient has problems or doesn't have adequate relief from symptoms, goes on to the next most likely drug, and so on and so forth until that particular patient is stable and is *NOT* suffering horrible side effects.

Anti-medication people post the side effect profiles as if every patient is going to get them, or as if the side effects come out of nowhere full-force and the patient suffers irreparable harm overnight.

In truth, some side effects are more common than others, and if the doc and the patient and the patient's family are watching, they can virtually always catch the side effect when it's just starting and before permanent damage is done.  Then they switch to another drug and watch it for its side effects.  Since each patient has good and bad reactions to different drugs, the psychiatrist almost always finds a medication or combination the patient can tolerate and be stable on without horrible side effects.

In truth, following the process *competently*, almost no patients are permanently damaged by drug side effects unless the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.

Yes, it's also true that you have to pay attention and insist to get a competent doc, you have to ask questions about side effects, you have to pay attention and work with the doctor to make sure impending bad side effects are noticed early and you get the hell off *that* drug and onto a different one.

It is true that you have to be willing to drop a specific pdoc like a hot rock if he/she won't listen to you or communicate with you about drug side effect profiles or won't spend enough time with you to notice if something starts to go wrong.

But the rewards of stability are well worth the diligence it takes to get good results through the process.

It is *also* true that there are a minority of patients whose illness is not responsive to any of the medications we have now.  *Some* of those patients get substantial improvements from a short course of shock therapy.  It's *rarely* used, but if you have drug-resistant mental illness, sometimes even knowing the risks, it's worth it to a patient to get the potential for improvement in their disorder.

It is true that some people's illness is so resistant to the drugs we have now that they end up on no drugs because there are none that work for them without horrible side effects.  Those patients are in the minority, but it does happen.

It is true that some people get *some* improvement from drugs but not totally stabilized.  My cousin is on total social security disability with her bipolar disorder, and with the best the doctors and medicines can do, she still sleeps on the couch with the TV on every night to drown out the voices.  And when she feels like she's getting dangerous, she goes and checks herself into the mental hospital, and they call her mother, and when she's stable enough again to go home, they send her home.  That's the nature of the illness--the symptoms come and go.

The current selection of drugs, the current process for finding the right drugs for each patient---it's not perfect and it's not the Holy Grail.  And it's not a cure.

That's why they're always looking for new and better meds with fewer or easier side effects.

That's why people who are mentally ill or have close family who are mentally ill keep a close watch on the genetics research, and on the research to repair brain damage or neural damage.  We never give up hoping that someday they'll find a cure.  It will probably be a combination of some drug or other with gene therapy.  The drug therapy to repair the damage, the gene therapy to keep the disorder from getting triggered again.

We keep hoping they'll identify the triggers so that we can work harder at protecting our children from encountering whatever triggers it and coming down with it in the first place.

We keep hoping they'll keep identifying more of the things that worsen the course of the illness, or ameliorate it, so that we can adjust our lifestyles to have less severe problems.

We pay attention to the whole spectrum of research and data coming in---which is why I take fish oil and Ginko Biloba for my executive function problems, as well as my doc switching me to Lamictal because it helps with those problems, too.

We pay attention to the research that says that marijuana use worsens the course of bipolar disorder.  It's not "reefer madness" hysteria---it's just recently been identifies as *one* of the possible triggers that *may* worsen the course of the disease.  The research is, by my lights, preliminary and I will be watching closely to see what follow-up research shows, but as one possible trigger, we pay close attention.

SSRI's, for *some* patients, for *some* kinds of bipolar disorder, worsen the course of the disease, they think.  They think Ritalin worsens the course of the disease.  It (tentatively) looks like anything that triggers mania has a long term negative effect on the course of the disease.  It (tentatively) looks like mania is not just behavioral, it's a symptom that indicates that the brain is, right then, undergoing actual damage.

We mentally ill folks and relatives of mentally ill folks pay attention to every therapy, surgery, drug, supplement, trigger, risk factor, gene study----everything about the illnesses that come down the pike.

Because every day we desperately hope for better treatments or a cure.

It just hurts when I read (and from what I can tell, it hurts other mentally ill people and family members when they read) people passing around misinformation or misinformed hysteria about the various treatments, the risks and benefits, and the *reputable*, *well-designed* research coming down the pike.

We all work so hard at staying informed about the treatments and their risks and benefits, and nobody knows that the present knowledge about the disease and the present treatments have risks, have drawbacks, and don't help everyone.

If you could read the CABF homeschool list and see what some of these parents have to cope with every single day, and how *desperately* hard they try to get their children an education, and keep them stable, and keep them safe, and keep them from running afoul of the law, and keep them out of the hospital, and keep them out of an RTC----if you could see all that, every day, day in and day out, it would break your heart.

It practically breaks mine, and I and my daughter are so lucky to be good medication responders, high function, with limited side effects.  We're not normal by any means, but we're very, very lucky.

It's very hard not to take misinformation and hysteria personally, because anybody---parent or patient or caretaking relative---that runs across the misinformation or hysteria and buys into it can suffer horrible, horrible needless pain and damage and grief.  I *see* the pain and damage and grief of other parents with sick kids and their heartbreak while doing the very best that can be done with the current state of medicine---I see it every single day.

And every parent or patient or caretaker that buys into misinformation---I can imagine their pain more clearly than anyone who doesn't have to live with this disorder, and the other people who are in the same boat, day in and day out.

It's hard enough for us without paranoid moonbats making it even harder.

It sucks.  It sucks rocks, it sucks out loud, it bites---It sucks to the maximum possible level of suckosity.

Maybe by the time my daughter is grown they'll have a real cure.  Cured people don't have to worry anymore about being damaged by falling for misinformation.  I hope for a real cure and normal lives for us every day.

Timoclea

If you think yourself too wise to involve
yourself in government, you will be governed
by those too foolish to govern.  
--Plato


50
The Troubled Teen Industry / Boonville police urge caution on Kemper
« on: April 15, 2005, 01:52:00 PM »
If you stuck a clause in the sale agreement that said:

The city shall have the right, in perpetuity, to inspect the property at any time.

Neither duct tape--nor any other type of tape or adhesive or bonding material or device used for a restraining purpose, restraints, nor pepper spray, shall be used on any student in the facility at any time.

Should the city determine at any time that duct tape or any other type of tape or adhesive or bonding material or device used for a restraining purpose, restraints, or pepper spray, are being used or have been used on the property on a student, or off the property under the control of staff, administration, or their agents or assigns acting on behalf of staff or administration on a student at that time enrolled in the school, the property and all improvements thereon shall immediately revert in its entirety to the ownership of the city.

In the event of such reversion, the purchaser agrees that all monies or other valuable consideration paid for the property and the improvements thereon shall be deemed forfeited and neither the purchaser nor owner nor anyone associeted therewith shall have any right to any refund or payment of any amount of same.

This clause shall be a deed restriction, attached to the property in perpetuity, and shall be binding on any and all subsequent purchasers or any who obtain any ownership interest, in whole or in part, in the property or the improvements thereon at any later date.

----------------------------------------

If you put that clause in the contract, do you *really* think Hinton or his people would go through the sale?  No?

If they're not willing to put it in writing, with teeth, they don't really mean it, do they?

It's just like negotiating a pre-nup agreement.  If you agree with your prospective partner that you're going to have a contract, and your partner swears up and down that he/she will be faithful to you in your marriage, and is unwilling to put a punitive clause in the prenup specifying substantial damages if either of you is unfaithful----if you really care about fidelity, you'd be a friggin' idiot to still marry the schmuck.

So mister or miz "give them a chance"---unless you're willing to put it in the contract and put it in with *teeth* and see if Hinton and/or his people are willing to sign it and go through with the sale, then you are just sharing a wink, wink, nudge, nudge with Hinton over the restraints, duct tape, and pepper spray issue.

If you aren't willing to put it in the sale contract, with very sharp teeth, and tell Hinton to go to hell if he won't sign, then you're not just gullible as hell---you think *we* are, too.

If you *really* believed he wasn't going to abuse the kids in these ways, you'd be willing to stick it in the contract, with teeth, and tell him to go to hell if he wouldn't buy on those terms.

If you aren't willing to put it in the contract with teeth and to hell with it if it nixes the sale, then you don't really give a damn if he abuses the kids---you just want to lie to yourself and us that you give a damn.  You just want the money in a way that lets you wash your hands of the consequences and lie to yourself about it so you can look yourself in the mirror each day and when and if it happens say, "Oh, we didn't know.  He *lied* to us?!  Who could have *ever* thought such a nice man would have lied to us?!  It's not *our* fault, oh, no, it's not."

I hope you're a nice, sincere person who really believes him but will put it in the contract, and risk losing the sale, just to make sure.

But money can be a strong incentive for people to lie to themselves and others and look the other way while bad people do bad things.

Now, I don't know for sure that Hinton is a bad person or is going to abuse those kids.

But I *do* know for sure that if he is really sincere about keeping it from happening, he wouldn't even blink about putting a clause like that, with the wording cleaned up by the lawyers, in as part of the sale agreement.

And I *do* know for sure that if you are really sincere about keeping it from happening and don't just want to be able to plausibly wash your hands while taking the money and running, that now that the means of *ensuring* he's telling the truth---or fixing it at no cost to your city if he's not---has been pointed out to you, that you will insist on such a clause in the agreement.

So, which are you?  Sincere, or money hungry?

You're one or the other.  There is no more gray.  You either are willing to make him suffer the consequences if he's lying to you---or go away before he pays you in the first place, or you want the money so bad you just want to pretend you care.

No gray.  Where do you stand?

Timoclea

Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain, worthless as wither'd weeds.
--Emily Bronte

[ This Message was edited by: Timoclea on 2005-04-15 10:53 ][ This Message was edited by: Timoclea on 2005-04-15 10:56 ]

51
The Troubled Teen Industry / Boonville police urge caution on Kemper
« on: April 15, 2005, 01:28:00 PM »
If you were a sixteen year old girl, and a teenage boy promised you he would respect you in the morning, and that he really loved you and wasn't just trying to get in your pants, and that if you took all your clothes and he took off his that he just wanted to lie down with you like that and didn't want to do anything else and wouldn't try anything else, would you *really* believe him.

You appear to have never even considered the possibility that Hinton may be lying through his teeth, or what your recourse (or lack of it) would or will be if he is.

He's saying, in effect, "Trust me."  And you're buying it.

You are, in my opinion, a very foolishly gullible person.

If you were (hypothetically) sixteen, and your parents allowed you to date, with that level of credulity I wouldn't be the least surprised if you were pregnant and abandoned inside of two years.

"...the maid who mistakes my meaning will not be maid longer less things be made shorter...." -- Willy Shake Spear.

I strongly advise you to *never* answer any emails from Nigerians or that promise you chunks of Saddam's money.

"He says he won't use duct tape or restraints or pepper spray."

Well la dee da.  Didn't you ever learn anything from the times people have lied to you in your life?

Timoclea

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.


--Nietzsche


52
The Troubled Teen Industry / Parents, please consider this
« on: April 15, 2005, 01:10:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-15 03:17:00, Perrigaud wrote:

"No, never did go to Juvi due to the fact that I never got caught. People knew it was going on however they couldn't say much. Schools kicked me out but never had enough to prove anything. Hence the kicking me out. I was on juvinile diversion for a school fight.



Hell yes the program helped me. It didn't fix me as I was not broken. I'm not a toy I'm a person. I needed guidance to help me figure out what the hell was going on. I needed help forgiving myself and others. I needed a break from all the crap I had going on around me. I went to a residential treatment facility. I had a therapist that helped me tremendously. I didn't feel abandoned. I was pissed that I was in a place I couldn't run away from. I was happy to be away from my famiy. Even now I am grateful I got to go through the program. Again not everything is agreeable. It's not perfect and there are things I disagree with. But I never got abused. I gained so much insight by going through the program. How would my life be like? Dunno. Can't say for sure. However I did attempt suicide (half hearted of course). Maybe I would have kept spiraling down and kept hurting people physically and mentally? Who knows. And maybe I would've finally gotten caught, gone to juvi, and decided to get my life straight. Who knows?"


Some kids are juvenile delinquents, and are not mentally ill.  And I don't mean just status offenses like being sexually active or running away, or being truant.  Some kids do things that do tangible harm to others, like assault and battery, or breaking and entering, or DUI, or shoplifting, or arson, or worse.

At least, if there's something wrong with their brains contributing to the behavior, we certainly can't identify it well enough yet to have any success using that as a model for helping them.

I doubt juvie is the absolute perfect facility, all implementations of juvie, everywhere, for dealing with hard-core juvenile delinquency.

I don't doubt that some of the programs, sometimes, under some staff and administration combinations, for some JD's, do a better job than the local juvie detention facility would do.

My problem isn't the existence of reform schools.  My problem is the lack of procedural safeguards and enforcement mechanisms to make sure that only JD's are in the reform schools, that the JD's basic human rights are respected the same way they have to be in juvie--including timely and appropriate medical treatment, and that staffers have background checks and mechanisms to get bad staffers or admins out of the system efficiently and in a timely manner.

If the programs were *good* privately run versions of juvie, with the appropriate safeguards and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that they were and remained *good* versions, I'd wish they didn't have to exist, but I wouldn't have problem with them existing.  I'd agree with their need to exist, just like I agree with the need for juvie to exist now.

I can accept and agree with the idea that for real JDs, you can potentially get better results shipping specific kinds of cases to specialized regional or national facilities rather than putting them in a one-size-fits-all local facility.

It's not the existence of specialized private reform schools for JDs that bothers me.  It's the lack of safeguards.

Even real juvie has mentally ill JDs inappropriately placed or inappropriately deprived of correct psychiatric treatment.

I want reform, not closure.

One of my problems with the whole correspondence issue is philosophical.  While parents can tell their kids that the kid can't play with or talk to Johnny across the street, they really can't keep the kid from talking to Johnny.  While they may tell the kid that they can't see or talk to specific other kids at their school, they really can't enforce that if the kids have lunch or recess at the same time or ride the same bus.

Personally, I think that's a good thing.

And I think that minors do and ought to have certain basic rights that their parents shouldn't be allowed to interfere with.  One of those rights is freedom of thought.  My child may have to obey me, but if she thinks I'm full of shit about making her eat her vegetables, she has the right to freedom of thought to think that.

I may have a serious grudge against Dr. Seuss.  Or horse stories.  Or Laura Ingalls Wilder.  But unless the story has a lot of sex or violence or racism or religious material, unless they homeschool them or keep them out of the public library, parents can't keep their children from reading Dr. Seuss or horse stories or Little House on the Prairie.  And they can't keep their children from reading those stories at a neighbor's house unless they pretty much make the kid a prisoner in his or her own home.

I think that's a good thing.

I think it's good that parents don't and can't possibly have absolute control over the speech, or reading material, or thought, or TV viewing material, or radio listening material of their children.  Some parents are flakes.  Society has an interest in children growing up to be integrated and functioning members of society.  Some of the natural and functional limitations on parental control of the inputs that shape their children's thoughts and the outputs that are expressions of those thoughts are good and necessary and appropriate.

We don't generally dictate these freedoms for the child from their parents' control by law, because we don't generally *have* to.  We don't have to open that can of worms.  The child gets around as much parental control as he or she usually needs to, usually all on his or her own, so that even when the parents are total flakes the kid has the ability to grow up with some sort of capacity to think for himself or herself and be functional in society.

But if it were to happen that parents were to *become* able to exercise full control over all these things, I think we *should* legislate to keep them from doing so---except in cases of legitimate parental concern about sex, violence, religious content, or racism/hate.

I don't think all parental control is legitimate.

In line with this philosophical position, I firmly believe that as long as children aren't advocating violence or other lawbreaking, as long as they aren't defaming anyone with untruths, as long as they aren't harrassing anyone---I believe one of their fundamental rights of communication ought to be to send letters to any person or people they want, saying anything they want, if they can get the stamps or computer access or whatever---that is, if someone gives them either stamps or computer access.  Like the public library currently gives internet access and yahoo and hotmail give email accounts.

I think if children want to complain about their parents, or their school, or their church, or their other relatives, or their government, or the laws, or *anything*, that the right to freely complain to anyone in email or snail mail is a fundamental free speech right of each child that should be protected *from* their parents, their school, their government, etc.

Everybody, of whatever age, has the fundamental right to bitch in private correspondence, about anyone or anything, to anyone or any group that is willing to recieve the correspondence.

My biggest problem with the programs, philosophically, is that they interfere with that fundamental free speech right.

I think in their natural day to day environment at home, at school, and in the community, children of all and any ages enjoy the right to bitch.  It's something you cannot physically limit *except* by jail and total surveillance.

I think that right has never been protected by law because it has never had to be.

I think now it has to be, and must be.

I think depriving these children of the fundamental right to sufficient privacy to bitch, whine, moan, and complain is one of the worst systematic abuses of the human mind and soul that these places, and the parents who abuse their discretion to use these places, perpetrate, and I find it deeply morally and intellectually and philosophically offensive.

I find it an absolutely obscene breach of human rights.

And I will oppose that breach to my dying breath.

What they do is inhuman, and horribly, horribly, monstrously wrong.

Timoclea

the war on drugs is but one manifestation, albeit a very dramatic one, of the great moral contests of our age -- the struggle between two diametrically opposed images of man: between man as responsible moral agent, 'condemned' to freedom, benefiting and suffering from the consequences of his actions; and man as irresponsible child, unfit for freedom, 'protected' from its risks by agents of the omnicompetent state.
--Thomas Szasz

[ This Message was edited by: Timoclea on 2005-04-15 10:12 ][ This Message was edited by: Timoclea on 2005-04-15 10:14 ]

53
The Troubled Teen Industry / Percentage of Psychotic People who are Violent
« on: April 15, 2005, 12:32:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-14 16:08:00, Anonymous wrote:

"

Paul,

You are misinformed.

While Scientologists do opposed psychiatry, that's as ludicrous as saying that because someone believes in 'the golden rule' they must be a christian.

To set the record straight, one doesn't have to be a Scientologist to reject the fraudulent psychiatric industry.

I wonder what you base your 'imaginings' on?

It frequently happens that one has things in common with groups that they don't choose to be members of.

I personally opposed it long before I knew Scientology existed, as many others I know did.



It's my opinion that psychiatry has it's own little (rather, huge) cult going. You might change your mind if you ever find yourself ensnared in their web.

"


Absolutely.  Nothing *ever* goes biologically wrong with the brain in ways that systematically affect thought, feeling, and behavior, and anyone who thinks otherwise is part of the conspiracy or a dupe of the conspiracy.

The brain is perfect.  Nothing goes wrong with it, ever, that can't be fixed by positive thinking or alternatives.  Why, you can slam somebody's head open with an axe, and if they survive, they can fix absolutely everything about their behavior and thoughts with positive thinking and acts of will and hugs and "alternatives" because the brain is a perfect and amazing organ, unique in the entire human body in the ability to heal itself in response to wishful thi...er...alternatives.

And nothing *ever* goes wrong with the brain as a result of any kind of genetic predisposition, and anybody who thinks otherwise is either a money-grubbing industrialist or a fool and a dupe of same, or a member of the "fraudulent" psychiatric industry.  Because the brain is uniquely responsive to "alternatives" and there's nothing genetic about it---unique among all the major systems or organs in the body in its total lack of genetic quirks and gimmicks that make some people more susceptible to specific medical problems in those systems and organs than others.

Yep, nothing ever goes wrong with the brain, no sirree.  Why, I knew a man hit by a car once and it knocked half his brain away, and due to pure luck an alternative practitioner stopped by the side of the road before those dangerous ambulance people could take him away, and he had him positive-thinking and alternativing and his brain had grown all the way back in just six and a half minutes.  And I've got five thousand internet articles from people who met the guy, or his cousin, or his cousin's brother's third cousin's boss's sister, just to prove it.

Can't have nun of them fraud-you-lent psy-kee-at-rists ruinin' mah brain with drugs.  No, never, not me, no way, they ain't gunna put one over on me, no sirreee Bob!

Fnord.

Timoclea

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father and inventor


54
The Troubled Teen Industry / CABF
« on: April 15, 2005, 12:21:00 PM »
Uh...sure, right.  Because nothing ever goes biologically wrong with the brain in ways that systematically affect thought and behavior, and there are absolutely no genetic illnesses that primarily affect the brain, even though there are genetic predisprositions for illness that affect just about every other major organ or system in the human body.

But not the brain, no sirree.

And anybody who thinks otherwise is just out to increase drug company profits or a dupe of same.

The idea that anything ever goes biologically wrong with the brain that is better fixed by drugs than by "alternatives" is all a conspiracy.

Yep.  Sure.  Fine.  Whatever.

Timoclea

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
--Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic


55
The Troubled Teen Industry / Percentage of Psychotic People who are Violent
« on: April 13, 2005, 09:27:00 PM »
It's hard to come up with hard numbers, but these, below, are the best ones I can find about the risk of violence from psychotic people where the risk is put in percentage of the psychotic people who are violent and the effects of medication on the risk.

Keep in mind that some of these numbers are for habitual violence, some for violence in the past year or past four months, some for what percent had criminal convictions.

It's pretty hard to reasonably extrapolate a lifetime risk for a psychotic person to be violent from the available research.

But it's pretty darned sure that not taking your meds increases that risk *a lot*.

So if you're psychotic and don't want to go to jail, take your meds.

If your loved one is psychotic and you don't want them to commit awful crimes and go to jail, they need to take their meds.

The overwhelming consensus of research psychologists and research psychiatrists---who frequently work in academia and don't exactly have an incentive to get themselves more patients, as has been suggested----is that meds are strictly necessary to reduce the risk of violence in psychotic people.

The belief in "alternatives" as treatment for psychoses is very much a fringe belief.

Fringe beliefs have been right in the past when the mainstream was wrong----but it's not the way to bet.

Betting your life and the life of your loved ones and sometimes the lives of total strangers on the chance the fringe might be right this time would be a bad idea.

In the *abstract*, *hypothetically*---sure, play around with the idea that there might be non-medication treatments that can be developed that are effective.  But when you get down to real life cases based on what we know today, not giving your loved one psychiatric meds if she's psychotic is like praying over her bed instead of allowing a transfusion when she's been in a car wreck---or refusing to let her take the measles vaccine when there's an active measles outbreak in the community.

Yeah, sure, if there's no outbreak where you are, and you buy some of the links between mercury and autism, okay, sure, yada yada yada on the whole vaccine thing.  But when there's an outbreak right there in your community, you let the hypothetical people play in the fringe and you go down and get your kid the shot.

Yeah, sure, if your kid isn't actively psychotic, talk about the alternatives all you want, yada yada yada.  But if your kid is having delusions and halucinations you let the hypothetical people play in the fringe, and you bite the bullet and give your kid the meds.

Playing in the fringe has risks, and a lot of times they're much more serious risks than the actual treatment the fringe folk see as such a bogeyman.

----------------------------------------------

    *  A study of 133 outpatients with schizophrenia showed that "13 percent of the study group were characteristically violent." Having inadequately treated symptoms of delusions and hallucinations was one of the predictions of violent behavior. Specifically, "71 percent of the violent patients?had problems with medication compliance, compared with only 17 percent of those without hostile behaviors," a difference which was statistically highly significant (p< 0.001).

Bartels J, Drake RE, Wallach MA, et. al. Characteristic hostility in schizophrenic outpatients. Schizophrenia Bulletin 17:163-171, 1991.

    *  In a follow-up of patients released from a psychiatric hospital, Dr Henry Steadman et. al. reported that "27 percent of released male and female patients report at least one violent act within a means of four months after discharge."

Monahan J. Mental disorder and violent behavior. American Psychologist 47:511-521, 1992.

    *  A study of 348 inpatients in a Virginia state psychiatric hospital found that patients who refused to take medication "were more likely to be assaultive, were more likely to require seclusion and restraint, and had longer hospitalizations."

Kasper JA, Hoge SK, Feucht-Haviar T, et. al. Prospective study of patients? refusal of antipsychotic medication under a physician discretion review procedure. American Journal of Psychiatry 154:483-489, 1997.

    *  A 10-year follow-up of 1056 severely mentally ill patients discharged from mental hospitals in Sweden in 1986 reported that "of those who were 40 years old or younger at the time of discharge, nearly 40 percent had a criminal record as compared to less than 10 percent of the general public." Furthermore, "the most frequently occurring crimes are violent crimes."

Belfrage H. A ten-year follow-up of criminality in Stockholm mental patients. British Journal of Criminology 38:145-155, 1998.

    *  A study of 331 individuals with severe mental illness reported that 17.8 percent "had engaged in serious violent acts that involved weapons or caused injury." It also found that "substance abuse problems, medication noncompliance, and low insight into illness operate together to increase violence risk."

Swartz MS, Swanson JW, Hiday VA, et. al. Violence and severe mental illness: The effects of substance abuse and nonadherence to medication. American Journal of Psychiatry 155:226-231, 1998.

    *  A four-state (NH, CT, MD, and NC) study of 802 adults with severe mental illness (64 percent schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, 17 percent bipolar disorder) reported that 13.6 percent had been violent within the previous year. ?Violent? was defined as ?any physical fighting or assaultive actions causing bodily injury to another person, any use of lethal weapon to harm or threaten someone, or any sexual assault during that period.? Those who had been violent were more likely to have been homeless, to be substance abusers, and to be living in a violent environment. Those who had been violent were also 1.7 times more likely to have been noncompliant with medications. As has been found in other such studies, the women with severe psychiatric disorders were almost as likely to have been violent (11 percent) as were the men (15 percent). Because the data on violent behavior were collected by self-report, the authors suggested ?that our findings are probably conservative estimates of the true prevalence of violent behavior for persons with SMI.? They concluded ?that risk of violence among persons with SMI is a significant problem? and ?is substantially higher than estimates of the violence rate for the general population.?

Swanson JW, Swartz MS, Essock SM et al. The social-environmental context of violent behavior in persons treated for severe mental illness. American Journal of Public Health 92:1523-1531, 2002.

    *  In reviewing many of these studies in 1992 Professor John Monahan concluded: "The data that have recently become available, fairly read, suggest the one conclusion I did not want to reach: Whether the measure is the prevalence of violence among the disordered or the prevalence of disorder among the violent, whether the sample is people who are selected for treatment as inmates or patients in institutions or people randomly chosen from the open community, and no matter how many social and demographic factors are statistically taken into account, there appears to be a relationship between mental disorder and violent behavior."

Monahan J. Mental disorder and violent behavior. American Psychologist 47:511-521,1992.

    *  There is very little data which can be used to estimate the percentage of severely mentally ill individuals who become violent. The best study used the Danish psychiatric case register, covering the whole country, and convictions for criminal offenses. Between1978 and 1990 6.7 percent of males and 0.9 percent of females with "major mental disorders" (psychoses) were convicted of a violent crime ("all offenses involving interpersonal aggression or a threat thereof"), compared with 1.5 percent males and 0.1 percent females among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis. Since these are only convictions, it can be assumed that another unknown percentage committed a violent act for which they were not charged or convicted.

Hodgins S, Mednick SA, Brennan PA, et.al. Mental disorder and crime. Archives of General Psychiatry 53:489-496, 1996.

    * The incidence of violent behavior among severely mentally ill individuals in the studies discussed under II above includes:
          o 11 percent in the survey of NAMI families
          o 13 percent among outpatients with schizophrenia
          o 8.9 percent in treatment and 17.4 percent not in treatment in the MacArthur Foundation Study
          o 17.8 percent among inpatients with severe mental illness
    * In light of the above, it seems reasonable to estimate that at least 10 percent of males with a severe mental illness exhibit violent behavior at some time during their illness and a lesser percentage of females. Since there are at least 4 million individuals in the United States with schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder, then approximately 200,000 ? 250,000 severely mentally ill individuals are or have been violent.

Timoclea

Here's the site:
http://www.psychlaws.org/BriefingPapers/BP8.htm

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
--Robert Frost, American poet


56
The Troubled Teen Industry / SURVIVORS & Parents please read...What would you do?
« on: April 13, 2005, 08:47:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-13 10:05:00, Antigen wrote:

"My mind keeps going back to this kid. And I keep returning to the same ole', trite and dim witted seeming response. I have no idea what to make of auditory hallucinations.



The stock response is "go to the experts", and I hate ever saying that to anyone for any reason because "experts" are often wrong. But I suppose if my daughter were telling me she heard voices, I'd dive in and read up on auditory hallucinations from every conceivable angle to try and understand.



The thing that keeps bugging me is that this sounds like a sudden change. Is it related to puberty? Or did something horrible happen? Or is this kid just trying on one of the many available paint-by-numbers identities available in today's social marketplace?



It just seems so overwhelming and there are SO many vulters out there waiting to move in on desperate parents.



My trite, cliche, stock response is that a change of scene might do you good. If you're wealthy enough to afford one of these RTCs, maybe you can afford a trip instead. Something really different and interesting. Ask your daughter to help you choose a destination. Not that it'll magically solve all of her problems or yours. But sometimes, just getting away from everything, taking a break and doing/seeing something different can help anybody gain perspective.

Hear me people: We now have to deal with another race - small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possessions is a disease with them. These people have made many rules which the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.
http://www.powersource.com/gallery/people/sittbull.html' target='_new'>Chief Sitting Bull, speaking at the Powder River Conference, 1877


"


Ginger---mental illnesses often have their first onset in adolescents.

Nobody really knows why.  People have speculated that it might have to do with the upheaval--bodily and socially--of the teenage years, but nobody really knows.

They just know it happens.

I'd encourage any skeptic who doesn't think mental illnesses are real and neurological to google SPECT and Dr. Amen and look at the pictures of people's brains that he's got with different disorders.

It's all fine and well to say that there are alternatives to medication, but that doesn't help you a lot if your kid suicides or kills someone else.

People with garden variety, uncomplicated major depression---there are a lot of them, and they are less likely to commit acts of violence than people who aren't mentally ill.

Psychotic people are much, much more likely to commit acts of violence than people who are not mentally ill.

There are a lot *fewer* psychotic people than there are depressed people.

What that means is when you lump the few psychotic people together with the large number of depressed people and average the acts of violence per person committed by all mentally ill people, mentally ill people are no more likely to be violent than people without mental illnesses.

But lumping all mental illness into the same basket hides a very real danger to, and from, psychotic people.

Most---meaning more than half---psychotic people don't commit acts of violence.  But if you think about "most" as meaning "more than half" and think about the risks, it's just a really bad idea to trust a psychotic patient's health and welfare to "alternatives" to medication.

The risks of pursuing alternatives instead of medications, for psychotic people, outweigh the benefits of avoiding potential side effects.

This is especially true when you consider that there are a whole lot of drugs with antipsychotic effects, and that the atypical antipsychotics are less likely to have serious side effects than the old ones (Thorazine, etc.)

Letting somebody walk around actively psychotic---whether it's a child, another loved one, or yourself----just because you're paranoid that the FDA didn't know what they were doing when *they* evaluated the risks and benefits and said the drugs were safe and effective---is a very poor decision.

It's too late to decide going off your meds was a bad idea when you're in jail.

That it's high risk to leave people walking around actively psychotic---dangerous to them and everyone around them---is not opinion.  It's a fact.

Sometimes psychotic symptoms go into remission for awhile, but they can always come back.  Maintenance doses of the drugs are to stop that from happening and are much safer than just completely going off the meds.  If, because of bad side effects, you take a psychotic patient off the meds in the periods while they're in remission, you have to have someone watching them closely to get them back on the meds and stabilized when the remission period ends and the symptoms come back.

The symptoms can abate for awhile--even years, but that doesn't mean you or your loved one no longer has a mental illness.  There is no cure.

It will be nice someday if and when they find a cure, but right now, there isn't one.

Timoclea

It is criminal to steal a purse. It is daring to steal a fortune. It is a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases

--Schiller (1759-1805)


57
The Troubled Teen Industry / SURVIVORS & Parents please read...What would you do?
« on: April 12, 2005, 10:02:00 PM »
Oh, what the mother said about "she has convinced herself of some very bizarre beliefs and untruths."

That's a delusion.

The auditory hallucinations she had when she was hospitalized tells me she's had psychosis problems.

The persisting bizarre beliefs and untruths and that she doesn't realize they aren't so is what tells me she's still having psychotic symptoms.

Yeah, okay, delusions can take awhile to let go once you're stabilized.  But this girl is not stabilized, which makes the delusions much more worrisome.

She lies.  You don't know that she's not hearing voices right now telling her to kill herself or do something else---which could be anything.  You can't count on her to tell you if she's hearing things still or if they've stopped.  The delusions are all the parents have to go on.

The "bizarre beliefs" that she's "convinced herself" of is where what the mother is describing in everyday terms sounds like a delusion.

Yes, the parents need to protect this girl from further sexual abuse.

But first they need to get her stabilized.  She is not going to get raped or molested at the ER or the doctor's office.

Timoclea

In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
--James Madison, U.S. President


58
The Troubled Teen Industry / SURVIVORS & Parents please read...What would you do?
« on: April 12, 2005, 09:48:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-12 15:02:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Timoclea, normally I like and respect your posts. However, neither of us know anything about this situation other than what the Original Poster posted. If the girl is indeed having psychotic and suicidal symptoms of course she should see a doctor. If the family is a mess, they should deal with it.



My experience is as worthy as yours. Just because your experience is inherited mental illness does not mean that is the only case. There are many cases of mental illness induced by abuse.



I for one highly doubt that this is a situation where it is just a girl's onset of mental illness and the rest of the scene is a-ok. At the very least there is the information about the sexual abuse, which is the source of at least some of the stress the girl has been hiding. "


I'm not talking about the worthiness of your experience.

It doesn't matter whether mental symptoms are induced by genetics, emotional trauma, or head injury, the right medications for the affected brain lobes help normalize the patient's brain.

You cannot stop a child from being psychotic and suicidal just by making the home not sad.

I *said* if the home life is bad, by all means fix it.

But after having this prey on the back of my mind all day, I felt like my first post was very remiss in not telling the parents that this was a situation for immediate medical attention---acute care if she's been hallucinating and feeling suicidal within the past couple of days, calling the pdoc (today) if the hallucinations and feeling suicidal were just since the last pdoc appointment.

Some things you wait before contacting a doctor.  Some things you don't.  Some things you go straight to the hospital.  This is one of those things you don't wait on---whether you go straight to the hospital or not.

You kinda implied that fixing anything wrong in the home would get her better---and from the symptoms the mother listed, the daughter needs medical attention right now.  Psychosis---which is what the delusions and hallucinations the mom mentioned is---doesn't just get better when you fix the environment.

Unless they've seen the doctor within the past week or haven't had these symptoms since they last saw the doctor, they need to call their doctor ASAP, bare minimum.

Now sometimes you expect to still have some problems while you're ramping up dosage slowly on a new medication, or it takes a certain amount of time for it to kick in, or you have to wean off one that didn't work and need to get it out of your system before you try the next thing.  And in that case the doctor may know the symptoms are there and be doing the next needed thing about it and you follow it and bite your nails and go ahead and put the kid through the medication change.

But if the doc doesn't know the girl is having these symptoms since the last appointment---you call.  If the kid is talking suicidally and doing the "I wish I was dead" or "I hate being alive" thing, you go to the emergency room.

Which would you rather, that they call the doctor and go to the ER when she would have made it through the night or that they *don't* go and she hurts herself or someone else?

It doesn't matter what triggered it---sexual abuse or whatever----what matters is that she is ill *now*.  Acute treatment of depression and psychotic symptoms is the same no matter how you got them.

Your experience is worthwhile and you're a good person and all that, and I'm sure you mean well.

Some of the things the mother listed are psychotic symptoms and it doesn't matter how they got there, what matters is that they *are* there.

The girl is suicidal *after* being released from the hospital and can't be counted on to tell the truth about what she is experiencing.  It doesn't matter how they got there, what matters is that they *are* there.

Your experience is worthwhile and valid and you're a nice person----but if you've never been psychotic or suicidal, or you don't have advanced degrees in treating people who are, or you haven't raised a child who is, then you aren't up to giving advice on this that doesn't do more harm than good.

The mother could have been exaggerating for all we know.  It could be some twelve year old with a warped sense of humor that typed that message for all we know.  But I don't believe either of those things.  I believe it *was* a mother of a teenage girl who was giving an accurate description of her daughter's history and symptoms, and from what she said the situation is critically serious and is NOT something to fuck around with.

Of course if she's still experiencing bad crap you stop the bad crap.

But you put the house fire out before you vacuum the living room.  Your advice in *this particular* case, even though you mean well and sound like someone I would like and respect, is the equivalent of telling this lady to vacuum the floor when she should be calling the fire department.

A lot of times I'm not a tactful person, but I've been thinking about this on and off all day and I am *scared* for this mother and her kid, okay?

I'm not trying to hurt you.  I'm trying to get her to get medical care for a problem where time is of the essence.

Please don't lets have this be about you and me.  I'm sure you're nice, and I'm sure you know a lot within the area of your experience, but unless you're a psychiatrist, you aren't competent to actually help this woman and *I'm not either*---but she needs one, and she needs one now.

Timoclea

say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
--Kurt Vonnegut, American author


59
The Troubled Teen Industry / Darrington & WWASP
« on: April 12, 2005, 05:30:00 PM »
Quote
On 2005-04-08 21:37:00, Anonymous wrote:

"



Timoclea,



Are you aware of the polgymist cult in the very same backyard? Does the Governmentin Georgia  condone these type of cults?"


No, Georgia doesn't condone polygamy.  In fact, the local radio was reporting a manhunt for a bigamist just this week.

If you are aware of any polygamists in Georgia, particularly if they are associated with an RTC, please call the local law enforcement and give them your information.

Normally, I'm a live and let live sort of person, but polygamist cults have this history of forcing the early teenage girls into polygamous "marriages" with much older men, and running off their sons.  

As opposed to your garden-variety informal menage a trois (or quatre, cinq, six, etc.)

If it's between consenting adults and doesn't involve me or my husband, I don't care.  If they start pulling children into it, as the movie says,  "Hangin's too good for 'im!  Shootin's too good for 'im!  He ought to be torn into little bitty pieces and buried alive!"

so if you've got info on a polygamist cult in Georgia, by all means call the GBI and report it.

Timoclea

If you believe that people cannot be trusted to govern themselves,
then can they be trusted to govern others?
 
--Thomas Jefferson


60
The Troubled Teen Industry / SURVIVORS & Parents please read...What would you do?
« on: April 12, 2005, 05:06:00 PM »
I know you mean well and I'm sorry, but no, wrong, and your recommendation is dangerous.

Psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations, in a child, are *NOT* "reactions to sadness"---they are very serious and should be treated very seriously.

Yes, of course if there are problems with the environment you want to improve the environment.

But most likely these parents are just ordinary people whose daughter got a bad role of the genetic dice to be vulnerable to mental illness and something triggered it---we have no idea what triggers these vulnerabilities, just that as far as the doctors can tell the parents of these children are a lot like any other parents.

Since when identical twins get it, the other twin is much more likely to come down with it but not 100% sure to, we know there's a genetic component *and* something to trigger it, but that something could literally be *anything* and is something, since nobody has even half a clue what it is, that the parents have no control over.

These are not bad parents.  This is not a bad child.  This is a child with a serious neurological disorder that usually responds well to treatment, but it takes a fair bit of trial and error to find the right one of the many available treatment options for any specific patient.

Do not hand out the false hope to these parents that if they somehow make their home life perfect their child will no longer be psychotic.

I know you mean well, but your comments are more likely to sink the parents in self doubt, even though you said you don't intend that.  And I believe you don't intend that.

Nevertheless, if you sink them in self-doubt and persuade them to avoid getting their child on appropriate antipsychotic medication, that would be a disaster for their family and their child.

It could be the difference between their child living and dying---and that isn't program-speak exaggeration.

Their kid needs a good pediatric psychiatrist to take another close look at the kid's medication right the hell now, preferably in a hospital setting.

I quote:

"Suicide is often an impulsive act: A child can be having a glass of milk in the kitchen one minute and leap from a bedroom window the next.  It happens that fast; it happens that unexpectedly.  The notion that people who threaten suicide never actually go through with it is a dangerous myth."

_The Bipolar Child_, page 265, by Demitri Papolos, M.D. and Janice Papolose, ISBN 0-7679-1285-3
(also authors of _Overcoming Depression_

---------------------------------------------

"Many people might ask: Who would expose their child to such a symptom profile? Well, it all goes back to risk/benefit.  The chances are that the movement disorders and TD may not appear, but certainly psychosis, severe rage, and mania are malignant for a child.  Psychosis untreated gravely imperils a child."

Same, page 108

-------------------------------------------

"Demitri Papolos, M.D., is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and the codirector of the Program in Behavioral Genetics.  He is the director of research of the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation, and is in private practice in New York City and Westport, Connecticut.  Janice Papolos is the author of three other books, all recognized as definitive in their fields, and is the editor of the highly respected 'The Bipolar Child Newsletter.'  The Papoloses are the authors of the classic text _Overcoming Depression_, now in its third edition.  They live in Westport, Connecticut.  Visit their website at http://www.bipolarchild.com"

Biographical notes on book jacket.

-------------------------------------------------

If this were my child, and she is still suicidal and/or experiencing delusions, voices or hallucinations, I would take her *immediately* to the emergency room, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

If she is not still suicidal or experiencing delusions, voices or hallucinations, I would call her psychiatrist (pdoc) and get a phone consult and talk to the pdoc *today* about the symptoms she has been having.

This is *not* something to take lightly, and it is *not* something to wait on.

Consult a qualified pdoc right now.

I am not a doctor, but I can tell you need one, and you need one now.

The only exception would be if you have seen her pdoc in the past week and the pdoc said it would take a bit for the symptoms to clear.

When my daughter was this unstable---and she wasn't even suicidal or psychotic, "just" manic---her pdoc was seeing her *weekly* to monitor how she was or wasn't adapting to her changes in medication.

Timoclea, bp for 22 years, stable on paxil, welbutriin, lamictal
mom to Katie, bp, 9 years old, stable on Abilify

BS in Psychology, Georgia Tech, 1990

Quote
On 2005-04-12 10:19:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Original Poster:



I am not saying this to call you out or make you feel bad.



But please look at the whole household situation for your daughter. What have things been like? If she is a very sensitive girl, she could at least in part be reacting to whatever the problems are with the people she is living with. I speak from personal experience. In a house of pain, I think the sensitive child reacts and takes on all the pain, expressing it by what she is doing.



Her bizarre ideas could be a reaction to or a way to escape from all of the stress at home. Whether the relationships around the house are noisy and confrontational, or stewing with unspoken painful history, teenagers often feel this stuff acutely. This will take a little passage through pretty uncomfortable stuff for you, too.



I only wish you the very best, and thank you for posting here and caring to ask about getting the right kind of assistance for your daughter.



"

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? ... If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
-- Patrick Henry


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