Books

TROUBLED: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs – Each year thousands of young adults deemed out of control—suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety, and rage—are carted off against their will to remote wilderness programs and treatment facilities across the country. Desperate parents of these “troubled teens” fear it’s their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever.

Acclaimed journalist Kenneth R. Rosen knows firsthand the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out at these programs. He lived it. In Troubled, Rosen unspools the stories of four graduates on their own scarred journeys through the programs into adulthood. Based on three years of reporting and more than one hundred interviews with other clients, their parents, psychologists, and health-care professionals, Troubled combines harrowing storytelling with investigative journalism to expose the disturbing truth about the massively profitable, sometimes fatal, grossly unchecked redirection industry.

Not without hope, Troubled ultimately delivers an emotional, crucial tapestry of coming of age, neglect, exploitation, trauma, and fraught redemption.

Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids – The troubled-teen industry, with its scaremongering and claims of miraculous changes in behavior through harsh discipline, has existed in one form or another for decades, despite a dearth of evidence supporting its methods. And the growing number of programs that make up this industry are today finding more customers than ever.

Surviving Bethel: A true story of surviving torture and abuse – A true story about a boy who attended the abusive and corrupt Bethel Boys Academy!The story is captivating and heart breaking. At times it will make you laugh and at times you will cry! Many Magazines and TV programs have reported on this school including BARBRA WALTERS in 20/20. Author Allen Knoll tells his captivating story of surviving an incredibly abusive school that hid behind religion.

Boot Camp – In the middle of the night Garrett is taken from his home to Harmony Lake, a boot camp for troubled teens. Maybe some kids deserve to be sent there, but Garrett knows he doesn’t. Subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse, he tries to fight back, but the battle is futile. He won’t be allowed to leave until he’s admitted his “mistakes” and conformed to Harmony Lake’s standards of behavior. And there’s no way to fake it. Beaten, humiliated, and stripped of his pride, Garrett’s spirit is slowly ebbing away.

Jesus Land: A Memoir – Tells the story of a white girl who was sent from the Midwest to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic after she and her black adopted brother fought back against the racism and bullying that was directed toward them.

Institutionalized Persuasion: The Technology of Reformation in Straight Incorporated and the Residential Teen Treatment Industry – This is Marcus’s undergraduate thesis, written in 2013 and 2014. His graduate thesis, Totalistic Teen Treatment: A Qualitative Analysis of Retrospective Accounts (2019), is now available in paperback and as a free PDF, online. Institutionalized Persuasion provides new information about the history and dynamics of coercion in residential teen treatment settings. While private sector programs continue to make millions utilizing dangerous yet unregulated methods, adolescents are abused each year in the name of treatment. By addressing the root causes of harm and presenting new strategies for the prevention of institutional child abuse, Institutionalized Persuasion offers a unique perspective on a highly controversial, persistent problem.

Totalistic Teen Treatment: A Qualitative Analysis of Retrospective Accounts – This original qualitative research analyzes adult reports about the experiences and impacts of totalistic teen programs. In the United States a wide array of residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness/outdoor, and intensive outpatient programs provide psychological and behavioral programming to “troubled” youth in totalistic settings. These programs are characterized by insularity, autocratic power structures, and intensive group practices. Some individuals may experience genuinely therapeutic responses to such treatment while others may experience a range of negative effects. Although federal investigations and dramatic news reports provide anecdotal evidence suggesting some program types may be problematic, few empirical studies have explored the relationship between program design and quality of life within totalistic settings, and very little is known about the way such programs impact adult development. This research used a purposeful stratified sampling technique to identify interview participants with a wide range of experiences within 25 different totalistic teen programs

Trapped in Paradise: A Memoir – Memoir of the life of a ‘student’ of the WWASP run Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge Programs. Imagine what it would be like being taken from your home in the middle of the night by complete strangers? ‘Trapped in Paradise: A Memoir’ details the history of a troubled teen and her inner-struggle of being held against her will in the controversial Jamaica facility, with little contact to the outside world. The story details the life of the troubled teen prior to being sent overseas to a controversial reform school for two years. The book has a great depiction of what it is like for a child to grow up with physical abuse, in a family whom also struggled to deal with mental illness. Particularly, obsessive compulsive hoarding addiction, anxiety and severe depression.

An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens – Desperate Parents, Troubled Teens. Tragic stories of desperate parents, the choices they made, and how you can avoid making their same mistakes

Gone to the Crazies: A Memoir – Alison Weaver’s privileged upbringing hid the darker undertones of her childhood until her parents shipped her away, at fifteen, to the cultish Cascade School, warping her perception of reality. Upon graduation, set adrift in New York’s East Village in the 1990s, her life began a downward spiral marked by needles and late-night parties. Stumbling into free fall and mingling with fears of death, she was forced to face her darkness. Here is Weaver’s thoughtful exploration of what it means to fight for identity and equilibrium.

From Miracle to Madness 2nd. Edition: The True Story of Charles Dederich and Synanon – True and complete Story of Charles Dederich and his founding of first ever peer drub rehab–Synanon– and turning it into a violent and terrorist cult which in turn spawned decades of abusive cults and therapeutic communities.

Straightling: A Memoir – She never was a badass. Or a slut, a junkie, or a stoner, like they told her she was. She was just a kid looking for something good, something that felt like love. Anybody could see that, except her mother. And the Straightlings. At 13, Cyndy ran away from her violent home. She was homeless for a month, which wasn’t all bad…but before she could even learn how to smoke pot right, her mother had her locked up in Straight Inc, a warehouse full of teen savages. On the outside, Straight was a drug rehab. On the inside, it was—it was something else.

Dead, Insane, or In Jail – The Dead, Insane, or in Jail memoir series tells Zack Bonnie’s story of his years at the Rocky Mountain Academy (a CEDU school) in Northern Idaho in the late 1980s. Tricked into going there at age fourteen, Zack ran away after several weeks, only to be returned there later that summer, where he remained for over two more years.