When it comes to the "Teen Help" industry, buyer beware!
Written: Jul 10 '07 (Updated Jul 12 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Important resource for parents of teens and researchers.
Cons: Most information is already online. Comparison of Abu Ghraib to teen help.
The Bottom Line: Help At Any Cost offers readers a negative perspective of the teen help industry.
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| knotheadusc's Full Review: |
Let me start this review of Maia Szalavitz's 2006 book Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids with an explanation. By training, I am a public health social worker, but I'm not a parent. I have never been in the position of having to deal with a teenager who is out of control, abusing drugs, or in trouble with the law. My perspective of the problems today's parents face as they raise their children is limited. Still, over the past few years, I've learned a lot about the so-called "teen help" industry, a burgeoning business that preys on the worries of parents who think their teenaged children are in a downward spiral. Since I'm not a parent myself, I can't know the anguish and desperation parents feel when it looks like their children are headed down the road to ruin. That said, I also have a hard time believing the abusive tactics some programs use are in the best interest of the children they are tasked to serve.
Maia Szalavitz's book Help At Any Cost is a revealing, well-written expose of the troubled teen help industry. Although there are hundreds of teen help programs in the United States today, Szalavitz concentrates on a few of the best known ones: the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), anti-drug programs Straight (and related programs the Seed, Safe, and KIDS), and North Star, a wilderness program. Having done my own research about these teen help programs, I already knew quite a bit about them before I picked up this book. For instance, I knew that WWASP schools are notoriously expensive, yet most of the WWASP programs do not have licensed mental health professionals or educators on staff. I had already read the sad stories of Aaron Bacon and Michelle Sutton, two teenagers who died while participating in wilderness boot camps for troubled teens. Aaron Bacon's story is particularly heartbreaking. And I had already seen a disturbing video expose of kids involved with Safe, an offshoot of Straight, an anti-drug program that became popular during the Reagan era.
These teen help programs have been successful because in some cases they have worked. For as many people who have claimed that the programs are abusive and inhumane, there have been others who have called them miraculous and life changing. The one point on which most people seem to agree is that being committed to any of the programs is not a pleasant experience.
I was particularly troubled when I read about how Aaron Bacon, a sensitive, intelligent young man, was accused of faking illness during his wilderness bootcamp experience in 1994. Bacon's parents had sent him to the program because the teen had been experimenting with marijuana and his grades were slipping. When they signed him up for the program, Bacon's parents had visions of the young man getting in touch with nature, writing, and talking with counselors under the stars. But Bacon ended up dying slowly and painfully of a perforated stomach ulcer, an emaciated, horribly sick wreck. As his life ebbed away, he pleaded for help. But the North Star program staff accused him of faking his symptoms, even as he protested and complained of severe pain. His cries of "I don't want to die, sir." fell on deaf ears as he died in the Utah wilderness. For that outcome, his parents paid $13,900, plus $775 to have Aaron forcibly removed from his home and escorted to the program.
The truth is, most of the information included in Help At Any Cost is freely available online, or at least it was online not long ago. What Szalavitz's book offers is a source that pulls readily available information together in one convenient volume. Her voice is compassionate and authoritative and her writing style is compelling. I didn't particularly like Szalavitz's comparison of teen help programs to Abu Ghraib, mainly because I don't think the two entities can be accurately compared. But other than that, I thought Szalavitz did a good job of warning readers about the dangers related to some of the more notorious teen help programs.
Even though I'm not a parent myself, I would recommend this book to parents of teenagers just to give them more perspective about the pitfalls related to teen help programs. I would also recommend it as a resource to anyone who is researching teen help programs for educational purposes. It's not especially good bedtime reading, since some of the subject matter is disturbing. Help At Any Cost must not have sold particularly well, since it's available at a sharp discount on Amazon.com. I purchased my copy for 9 cents from a third party seller. Still, the low price is not, in my opinion, an indicator of this book's quality or lack thereof. If you have teenagers at home or even if you're just curious about the teen help industry, Help at Any Cost is a valuable resource.
Recommended:
Yes
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