CFK Reports From: Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids
Event: Author presentation and discussion
Organized By: Cato Institute
Where/When: Cato Institute, Washington DC, April 20, 2006
Report by: Susan Phillips
Maia Szalavitz, the author of Help at Any Cost (Riverhead, 2006), spoke about what she learned in the process of researching and writing her book, which looks at the continued reliance by some states and parents on a "tough love" form of addiction treatment for adolescents that relies on physical intimidation, humiliation and isolation.
"Where did we get this idea that hurting kids will help them?" Szalavitz asked, comparing these tactics to those used by military interrogators in Iraq to break down suspected terrorists.
In addition, Evan Wright, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and an author as well, spoke about his own experience as a troubled 13-year-old committed to one of the programs discussed by Szalavitz, known as The Seed. The Seed was a chain of juvenile drug rehab programs founded by a comedian named Art Barker, which was initially federally funded but later denounced by the U.S. Senate.
"The Seed was insane," said Wright, who is also writing a book about his experience.
Wright said Barker, was "this charismatic figure. He told the kids we was making a new race of humans called homo superior." Those enrolled in the program were completely isolated from friends and family, music and entertainment were banned, and verbal abuse was common. Wright said teens would be forced to fight each other, and that the psychological pressure was intense, comparing it to the concept of brainwashing.
Though The Seed was discredited, it re-emerged as Straight, Inc. and some elements of the program have been used in other programs.
"There are still at least nine programs using some combination of (these) tactics," said Szalavitz, in several hundred facilities with between 10,000 and 20,000 teens undergoing treatment at any one time. She identified a core element of the ideology behind these programs as to assume that addicted teens are lying, and that "Any refusal to do anything is seen as defiant." That kind of thinking can lead to abuse and even death, said Szalavitz, who noted several well-publicized boot-camp deaths could be attributed to adult staff refusing to believe students who complained of feeling sick.
Szavalitz said the programs persist in part because of an exaggerated fear of drugs and addiction, and a lack of understanding among the public about what works and what doesn't work. "Virtually no kids die of drugs," said Szavalitz. "Kids are hardy. But the media sells papers by scaring parents." She argued the vast majority of kids who experiment with drugs will stop on their own within a few years, and that most of those who do not have other underlying conditions such as depression or ADD and need to be treated with that in mind.
A lack of regulation and oversight makes abuse possible, she argued, and said that any reputable residential addiction program should guarantee those in treatment around-the-clock unmonitored access to an abuse hotline, as a minimum protection.
She identified the following red flags for parents or others evaluating a program: the use of non-professional staff; rules that don't allow parents to have contact with their children for any period of time; indications that program administrators consider children to be habitual liars. Szavalitz argued that the most effective treatments are usually family-based rather than residential, citing Functional Family Therapy and Multiple System Family Therapy as examples of research-based treatment options for addicted teens.