Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Alex Asch's Story

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Antigen:
Sorry, I don't have that info myself. Wes might. If you do turn up interested contacts, please let them know about these forums. If there's an interest, I'll set up a Turnabout forum here.
May your days be joyously challenging and your words artfully true.
--Ginger Warbis
--- End quote ---

Deborah:
Stillwater - Turnabout Program (Co-ed)
Lee Chadwick
801-484-9911
2738 South 2000 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84109
http://www.natsap.org/programs_list.asp

Woah Boy!!
Caldwell: I can train a horse to do what I want it to do, but I cannot force it to want to be close to me. You can force your children to do what you want them to, but you absolutely cannot force them to want to be close to you. When a horse (or child) starts to cooperate, I let up the pressure. If he/she stops, I increase the pressure. I make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy.
It is an awesome thing to see a horse perform because I ask him to.  As you know, I cannot make him. The horse responds because we have laid the right foundation.  As we use these principles in our homes and in our treatment programs, kids change their behavior because they choose to, not because they have to.  They see the horse going through the same things they have to in order to change. In treatment, the kids have to make the same decisions.  Do I trust people?  Should I trust them?  Do I want to change?  It?s a wonderful thing. When kids and parents can see a horse change right before their eyes, they start to change too.
http://www.turnaboutteens.org/clementine_farm.html

2000
Turnabout is a Day Treatment Program for teenagers and their families that helps youth identify and resolve the underlying issues that are driving the destructive acting out behaviors being witnessed.
Day treatment takes place in an out-patient setting after which time clients return either to their own, or a host family?s home every evening. Turnabout also provides services to families who live outside the Salt Lake City area. Such students are placed in the Turnabout host home network, and if appropriate, a permanent host home is arranged for them. Parents of out-of-town students are encouraged to visit Turnabout on a regular basis to participate in weekly parents group and family counseling sessions.
?Parents are required to come to a Weekly Parent Group that is tailored to help families work on issues. We ask that parents become an active part of the treatment team?parental involvement in Turnabout is our key and secret to success.?
Turnabout also has a partnership with Rising Sun Ranch, in Lehi, Utah which ?enables troubled youth to have an opportunity to experience the day to day operations of a working horse ranch.
http://www.strugglingteens.com/archives ... /np03.html

2001
Changed the name of their program to Stillwater Academy to lessen the confusion with Turn About Ranch, also in Utah. http://www.strugglingteens.com/archives ... een03.html

The equine therapy is an important part of Stillwater?s Academy?s program, but there is much more. This program was formed based on the philosophy of parents helping parents, and it still retains this as a key aspect of its program. In the eighties, a group of parents whose teens had problems participated in a local ?Tough Love? group to gain mutual support and guidance. By 1988, the parents decided they needed more than just weekly meetings, moral support and advice, so they started what was formerly called the TurnAbout program. It was an expansion of the Tough Love groups into a system where the parents took other parents? children into their homes on a temporary basis when it seemed that would help the situation.

This of course evolved, but is still the basic concept behind the current living arrangements. Currently, students enrolled in the program live with participating parents on a rotating basis, which allows for about one-third of the 50-55 students in the program to be from elsewhere in the country. Two-thirds of the students are from the Salt Lake City area. As anticipated, living arrangements with participating parents allows tuition to be considerably lower than that of other programs who work with comparable children. Of course the parents have full staff support and training while participating, and contact with their own child is increased as it is earned. Caldwell reports this family-based system works quite smoothly and has many advantages, not the least of which are parents who are truly committed and involved in the program.

This unique model where parents help other parents, far exceeds the assistance offered by the usual parent support group and appears to be quite successful. Once a parent enrolls a child, the parent is automatically involved with an extensive parent network along with the staff at Stillwater Academy. If there are any parent support groups around the country looking for ways to increase the help they offer each other, they might learn a lot from talking to Stillwater Academy.
http://www.strugglingteens.com/archives ... sit02.html

Turnabout?s housing program offers benefits to both the students and the parents involved.  Turnabout students are able to live with surrogate families who care about them and hold the students accountable for their actions. Host parents are able to practice the parenting skills they are learning at Turnabout on other adolescents.  

Turnabout is also able to keep costs of treatment to a minimum based on the families? participation, because the program does not require the typical 24-hour hospital staff.
Is the housing system safe?

Absolutely!  Host homes will always have two students who act as supports to the parents and who are in charge of the other youth. Turnabout students are expected to participate in the upkeep of the family home where they are housed. They help by clearing the table, washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing chores for the family as needed.  Parents are asked to provide supervision, safety and food for the following day.
http://www.turnaboutteens.org/faq.html#7

Deborah:
http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2003/06/5217.php

To the dismay of his parents, Alex's life was going down a path that was different from their old and obsolete values. Alex would often have arguments with them about his values, the state of the world, and how it related to what he was doing. Alex's parents would use whatever means they had at their disposal to try to coerce him into adopting their values. They sent him to school psychiatrists, prescribed him sedative drugs, and put him in special programs...all against his will. The school psychiatrists said Alex had Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), a loosely defined behavioral diagnsis that labels "actively defying", "refusing to comply with rules", and "academic impairment" as "disorders".

http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid ... ode=thread
As of now, Turnabout Stillwater intends to end Alex Asch's "treatment program" on June 28, 2004, when he is legally an adult. His only way of communicating to his friends in New Jersey is through censored letters. He was not allowed outside for over 70 days, and is currently being forced to take unknown pharmaceutical drugs.

"Alex is just one subject of a uniquely contemporary phenomenon," said Deicide. "It is quite possible that America's children are being drugged into a state of complacency by corporations that are aware that without such apathy and indifference, the public, especially the youth, would be more difficult to control." Asch essentially feels the same way as Deicide about the interrelation of psychiatric treatment and pharmaceuticals in youth to the bigger picture.

Excellent Article:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16151
Here's a quote for you Ginger:
"What is most disturbing to me about ODD and other 'disorders' is that there is no real attempt to ascertain the environmental picture ? the social, political, and economic factors that drive a person's behavior," said Leah Harris, a progressive psychiatrist from Washington DC. "We're asking the wrong questions ? we shouldn't be asking, 'does this kid have a disease called ODD?' but 'why is this kid so at odds with his or her society?'"

In one of the letters he was able to send out he indicated that he had not seen the world outside of the camp for more than fifty days. He wrote that he has tremendous difficulty being able to even think under the circumstances and that he concentrates on his memories, friendships, and beliefs to ward off the "frightening miserable emotional state being brought upon me within my present situation." He often writes about the psychological fascism employed to "correct" his behavior and beliefs, and he says he is determined to resist being converted.

Antigen:
Hey Folks,
  Do we need a new forum on Turnabout?
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.
--Unknown
--- End quote ---

FaceKhan:
Nice to see someone come out of a program not messed up.

I guess its hard to be any more angry and anti-social than your typical anarchist is anyways. :razz:



On another note, anyone ever read "Bartleby" by Melville.

Its a short story. I just keep thinking about how a person would best resist incarceration and brainwashing.

What ways work, what ways don't.

I guess there are a lot of choices:

1. Fake it, conform on the outside to get out as soon as possible. The benefit is you avoid the physical pain, get your priveliges fast so you don't starve to death or get sick or go crazy and you may get out faster although not always the case. The drawback being you may start to believe what you are regurgitating and its hard to suppress the constant rage that screams kill those fucks.

2. Fight. Let loose, go psycho. Attack guards, other inmates, escape any chance you get. Benefits. You keep you mind intact, you don't give them any respect or an inch of help. You get to give those assholes what they deserve. And you may very well get kicked out if you are particulalry dangerous. The drawback being you are going to get a lot of beatings and spend most of your time there restrained or in isolation and assuming they keep you there you may be there a long time.

3. Fake it in order to escape when you get a chance. Benefits basically all the benefits of 1 except graduating early and few of the drawbacks of 2. It also gives you the benefit of well planned and thought out escapes so you won't be recaptured. Not so useful for foriegn locations though.

If I were in that situation I would probably fake it just long enough to get a chance to escape. Of course I have a low regard for the lives of my captors so I would probably find something to be used as a deadly weapon and walk out with a shiv against a senior staff member's throat. I would make them give me the keys to one of their trucks and if they came near, that staff guy is dead. Either way I am out of that place.

That goes especially if I were in a foriegn country because quite frankly, fuck those Jamaican fucks. I'd take my number two pencil and shove it through the teachers ear. Thats right I would kill to escape. The most committed wins.

In addition, cleaning chemicals make good poisons and bombs.

4. Passive resistance. Another way to make them think you are psycho and let you out. Simply shut down. Refuse to speak, refuse to listen, refuse everything. Passive resistance (for a good example read "Bartleby") is probably the most frusrating thing in the world for a person to deal with. If you really want to scare them, refuse to eat.




As for when they come to kidnap you in the first place. Simply refuse to go. Cry, fire, cry rape, cry bomb, call the cops. There is not really much need to fight them if you are not armed you will just end up in handcuffs.

There is no way you can get on a plane screaming bomb. You can make it so long and costly to get you anywhere that it won't be worth it. Every airport, every plane, every bus, every train make a scene and get the authorities involved. It will take an hour or longer to clear up each incident. It could take days to get you back on a plane. If you scream bomb, I guarantee you are never riding on a plane again.  

If they are trying to take you out of the country simply refuse. Tell the border security they are smuggling drugs, kidnapping you, terrorists.

Another good tactic is to make them carry you. They will get tired of that real quick.

Lastly fight. Tell them that you are not going with them and you will defend yourself with any force deemed necesary. Then if they insist. Make like you are gonna go and then say "I left my shoes in the kitchen." You go to the kitchen grab a knife and tell them to get the fuck out of your house or they are dead.

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