Troubled teen industry
The troubled teen industry (also known as TTI) is a broad range of youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers.
[3] They accept young people who are considered to have struggles with learning disabilities, emotional regulation, mental illness, and substance abuse.
[5] The troubled teen industry has encountered many scandals due to child abuse, institutional corruption, and deaths, and is highly controversial.
[12][13] Synanon popularized "tough love" attack therapy as a treatment for addiction, and the idea that confrontation and verbal condemnation could cure adolescent misbehavior.
[14] Synanon's techniques were highly influential and inspired human potential self-help organizations such as Erhard Seminars Training (est) and Lifespring.
[15]: 8 Former Synanon member Mel Wasserman founded CEDU Educational Services in 1967, a company which operated within the troubled teens industry.
[19] Synanon's techniques also inspired the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), an umbrella organization of facilities meant for rehabilitating troubled teenagers.
[8] Many or most troubled teen programs share a common lineage descending from Synanon, and use some form of "the game," a group attack therapy session.
[23] In 2007, the Government Accountability Office published a study verifying thousands of reports of abuse and death in TTI facilities dating back to 1990.
[34] 19-year-old Fred Collins Jr. found himself falsely imprisoned by Straight Inc., after initially visiting a family member who was enrolled in the program by his parents.
[44][45] Some troubled teen programs, including the well-known Provo Canyon School, have faced allegations of employing solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure.
[46] Solitary confinement is a controversial practice that involves isolating individuals from social contact and is the subject of extensive debate regarding its ethical and psychological implications.
Additionally, the now-defunct program known as Tranquility Bay, located in Jamaica, has also been reported to have utilized solitary confinement as part of its disciplinary methods.
[49] One particularly disturbing example of such abuse involves mock executions, wherein students were coerced into digging their own graves as part of a psychologically distressing exercise.
[51] Utah, California, Oregon, Montana, and Missouri have all enacted laws aimed at increasing oversight of troubled teen facilities.
[55] On June 27, 1990, Kristen Chase died from heatstroke whilst enrolled at the Challenger Foundation, a Wilderness Therapy program located in Kane County, Utah.
Among his symptoms were chronic urinary and fecal incontinence, for which staff would force him to eat meals on the toilet and sleep in his soiled underwear as punishment.
[65] The California Social Services Department investigation found widespread excessive use of physical restraint and hands-on confrontations by staff members.
