#troubledteens

TW: mentions of suicide, institutional abuse, kidnapping, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse 

A new day, a new Troubled Teen Industry post

But first, what is a “TTI.” The troubled teen industry is an umbrella term to refer to ‘For Profit’ residential treatment centers, boarding schools, and wildness therapy programs. I would like to preface this by saying that most psych hospitals are NOT under the umbrella term.

It is estimated that around 120k kids in the US are being housed in these facilities every year. Due to the lack of oversight, it is hard to fully pin down the exact number of facilities. Many of these facilities, however, are in Utah since Utah is a pretty remote state with almost no regulation on keeping troubled youth safe in these facilities. In Utah, kids have 6 rights that could fit on a singular piece of paper

What makes TTI as problematic as they are is the ‘for profit aspect’. It is a multi million dollar industry that market themselves as therapeutic treatment for a wide range of problems. When kids do not have a diagnosis to their behavior, programs also promote the treatment of normal behavior like braking back, internet addiction, or homosexuality as a need for treatment. This means that kids who need highly specialized medical care are housed in the same home as kids who are just there for bad grades at school. It also means that kids could be going through agony from drug withdrawal and TTI is not equipped to support them. The extremely diverse treatment leads to kids traumatizing each other by their behaviors.

These programs are run similar to pyramid schemes to keep children within the system as long as possible by providing financial compensation to individuals who refer others to the programs. Due to many kids going through many programs (with most of them being owned by the same parent company), many survivors or TTI refer to this as a variation of human trafficking as well as institutional abuse. While I was there, I personally knew many kids who had been in treatment for a few years and once they were discharged, they were just discharged to another program.

The programs also advertise themselves to parents as the only option to families. When parents feel scared about their kids behavior, these programs will tell the parents that they (the program) are the only option or their kid will end up dead or a failure. Parents will dig through their children’s college fund, life savings, and even sell their house to afford to keep up with the rate of treatment. While some states do cover the cost in entirety, this is not a blanket statement. Since it’s advertised as “treatment,” insurance companies do usually cover some of it but will eventually cut, this is when programs will beg parents to still keep their kids in the programs.

Going back to a person antidote, by the time I was getting ready to discharge, my parents had blown through their savings and my siblings and I’s college fund. My dad was working doubles and occasionally triple shifts every single day to make ends meet, my mother also (my parents aren’t together) eventually ended up having to sell our house due to the debt my family was put in but it wasn’t enough for the program. The program refused to let me go home until my parents harassed them enough to let me discharge. Without an offical discharge and only given me a withdrawal, I would not have been able to get out necessary accommodations from out of treatment like a therapist recommendation, an IEP set up, PHP or IOP.

Now how much are these programs? The program can range from 5k to 30k a month.

Now let’s get into one of the most controversial parts of TTI. Gooning also known as legal kidnapping. These services have little to no government regulation similarly to the rest of the industry and is very traumatizing to the kids. The transporters often use handcuffing and forceful seizing the child to obey what they are doing. Normally, transportions is done during the night so the kids are woken up to two strangers telling them they have to leave ASAP and they will get in trouble if they disobey.

Instead of delivering evidence-based treatment, many of these programs deliver a mix of maltreatment such as physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, isolation, forced hard labor, chemical sedation, sleep and food deprivation, attack therapy, aversion therapy, etc. This abuse is further compounded by the program’s function as a “total institution” where the students live under the authority of the program, have contact restricted to the outside world, and are forbidden to freely leave the programs for months to years.

Sexual abuse also runs rampant in these facilities. There are currently thousand of sexual abuse cases and allegations against staff members who face no punishment for their actions.

Attack therapy was created by Charles E Dederich for his drug addiction treatment program Synanon. Attack therapy is a controversial and largely discredited psychotherapeutic technique that uses highly confrontational, aggressive, and often verbally abusive methods to force a person to change their behavior. It involves verbal abuse, humiliation, shaming, and denouncing of the client by a therapist or by fellow clients in a group setting. The central theory behind attack therapy is to "tear them down in order to build them up.” The idea of attack therapy was also used in Dedriches cult as well which makes it even more controversial. As mentioned before, psychologist believe this therapy style is unhelpful to clients and makes mental health worse; However, it is commonly still used in residential. Most notably, the Elon school which got shut down after a post was made on reddit about the abusive practices that took place these

Here’s a link to a comic that a survivor of that school made about attack therapy: https://elan.school

Many facilities use a level system which requires kids to follow certain rules to earn “privileges”. These privileges are usually normal human rights including going outside or even talking to your parents. If kids do not follow rules then they get punished.

These punishments include

isolation

No food or sleep deprivation

Restricting social interaction

Depriving normal human bodily functions like the need to pee, poop, water, and occasionally requiring the kid to have “accidents” on themselves

Another traumatizing thing that occurs in residential treatment is the use of LOS. Line of sight is the use of requiring kids to be watched in the bathroom, shower, or when they are changing since the program has deemed them as a harm to themselves. On top of that, strip searches are common practicing and are occasionally done by th opposite sex.

There are currently many deaths attributed to TTI programs which include suicide and medical neglect. While the deaths not tracked, thousands have also committed suicide following their completion to the program.

To learn more about the troubled teen industry, unsilenced is a great resource and the hashtag on social media is #breakingcodesilence

The troubled teen industry is overlooked. It requires people to talk more about it. Kids are being abused every day. For these kids to receive justice, we need to advocate.

It starts with a conversation between a group of employees in an organization named “Short Term 12”- a stronghold of and for troubled children. Nate, a newly hired employee of the said company, together with his co-workers, were having a nice chat when an alarm suddenly rang, unknowingly, the alarm turned on because a child named Sammy rebelliously wanted to get out of that place. So they ran after him and bolted him down.

The employees, caretaker to be precise, are equipped with gallons of patience. Every day, they manage these children who are troubled physically, emotionally and mentally. They endure the kids’ troublesome actions calmly and patiently, and when one goes foolish, they do everything to calm down that child.

One day, a new kid came. Her name was Jayden, she was sent there and will be picked up by her father on her birthday which will be in a week. Since she was new, she was totally alone and weird. She looks like an innocent girl that acts like a mature woman.

One peaceful night, Grace, a caretaker of the organization, admitted to her husband- Mason, who is also a caretaker of the same company, that she was pregnant. Shocked by what he heard, he went out for a minute and shouted all he wanted to say, he returned and said they will make a happy family together.

The day came when it was time for Jayden to be picked up, she waited for minutes and realized that his dad wasn’t coming. Upset, she went back to her room and locked herself up, Grace and the others tried to calm her down but she went all out, Nate and Mason held her down and for a while she calmed and stayed in the quiet room. When Jayden totally calmed down, Grace let her out of the room and the kids celebrated her birthday.

Everyone was having fun when Jayden planned on going back home. She ran outside, Grace followed her and tried to talk it out, Grace had nothing to do but to follow her and monitor her safety. Jayden end up in her own home, finding no one. They both went back to Short Term 12 and before Grace left, Jayden read her a story she made titled “The octopus and the shark”. When she finished reading it, she broke up in tears, Grace then analytically comprehended that she needed help, that she was being abused by his father.

After that, Grace went to Mason’s family gathering where he proposed to Grace and accepted it whole-heartedly.

The next morning, Grace found out that Jayden’s been picked up by his father, she tried to convince Jack, who has a higher position than her, to bring Jayden back. But he said that’s it. Filled with rage, Grace took his lamp, went outside and threw the lamp. When she went back inside, she saw Marcus committing suicide using a shard of glass, they immediately brought him to the hospital.

That night Grace told Mason that she can’t do it, that she already made an appointment for abortion. Silence filled the air, Mason then told her “Then do what you want, I don’t care anymore”. Then Mason left.

Grace immediately jumped on her bike and went to Jayden’s place. Finding out that Jayden’s father was asleep, Grace planned on killing him but Jayden suddenly showed up and she stopped. Both went outside and had a chit chat. Grace then told her story when she was young, when she was abused by her father, and that she wasn’t afraid to tell the truth. Jayden, after hearing Grace’s story, for some reason grinned. She realized that she should have told everyone the truth.

The next day, Jayden reported the truth and was put into custody by the organization.

Grace then went to Mason, she apologized and cancelled the abortion. Both went to the doctor to see their baby and they were filled with happiness to see the life they made.

A day after that, it ended with Sammy running out again.

Guide Questions:

1.)    What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

Patience is the key to every problem, Grace, a protagonist in the movie along with other protagonists, filled themselves with patience. No matter the severity of the troublesome actions of the kids, they remained calm and patient. Another is “A mere word can change everything”, this is somewhat related to patience, because the kids they are taking care of are troubled teenagers, and a mere word would change their perspective. So the caretakers must be patient, meticulous and they must endure the teasing of the kids or they might turn the children’s world upside down. And lastly, experience is the best teacher. As what Grace did to lead Jayden and show her the right path. Grace made herself as an example and narrated her experience when she was a troubled teen. Whilst interpreting Grace’s story, Jayden slowly found herself, making a shift of tracks and walk the right route.

 2.)    What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? why?

In my own perception, the most powerful scene is when Jayden told her story of the octopus and the shark. After hearing her story, I felt sorry for her. She was asking for help in a peculiar way that only Grace understood. It’s the most powerful scene because it’s about the youth, the children, our future generation. Teenagers taking their own lives because of their own parent/s? It’s not right. Children are afraid to tell what really is happening because they are intimidated by their own parents, that one wrong word or move will lead to a violent ending. A parent’s most vital role is to love their children. It’s the simplest thing they could do.

 3.)    Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

In this film, my favorite character is Grace. As a caretaker of a household with a lot of troubled kids, she patiently manages them. She’s my favorite character because she has something that her co-workers didn’t have, her experience. She also became a troubled child, that’s why she felt what the children are also feeling. She can build a bridge between her and the children because she knows how, she has that ability that the others don’t have.

 4.)    Did anything that happened in the movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

Yes, it reminds me of some of my classmates. They kept their situation a secret. They didn’t want adults to know that they are being abused by their parents. That if it was known by others, their parents would be angrier and they’d end up with bruises physically and emotionally.

 5.)    If you had a chance to ask a character in this movie a question, what would that be?