The troubled teen industry (also known as TTI) is a broad range of youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers. The term encompasses various facilities and programs, including youth residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, and therapeutic boarding schools. These programs claim to rehabilitate and teach troubled teenagers through various practices. Troubled teen facilities are privately run, and the troubled teen industry constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry. They accept young people who are considered to have struggles with learning disabilities, emotional regulation, mental illness, and substance abuse. Young people may be labeled as "troubled teens", delinquents, or other language on their websites and other advertising materials. Sometimes, these therapies are used as a punishment for contravening family expectations. For example, one person was placed in a troubled teen program because her mother found her choice in boyfriends unacceptable. The troubled teen industry has encountered many scandals due to child abuse, institutional corruption, and deaths, and is highly controversial. Many critics of these facilities point to a lack of local, state, and federal laws in the United States and elsewhere governing them. Some countries and territories, such as Bermuda, have been known to send teenagers to programs located in the United States.
History The troubled teen industry has a precursor in the drug rehabilitation program called Synanon, founded in 1958 by Charles Dederich. By the late 1970s, Synanon had developed into a cult and adopted a resolution proclaiming the Synanon Religion, with Dederich as the highest spiritual authority, allowing the organization to qualify as tax-exempt under US law. Synanon rejected the use of medication for drug rehabilitation, and instead relied on the "Synanon Game", group sessions of attack therapy where members were encouraged to criticize and humiliate each other. Synanon popularized "tough love" attack therapy as a treatment for addiction, and the idea that confrontation and verbal condemnation could cure adolescent misbehavior. Synanon disbanded in 1991, after its tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS and it was bankrupted by having to pay US$17 million in back taxes.
Synanon's techniques were highly influential and inspired human potential self-help organizations such as Erhard Seminars Training (est) and Lifespring. Synanon-style therapy was also used in Straight, Incorporated and The Seed, two drug rehabilitation programs for youth. Former Synanon member Mel Wasserman founded CEDU Educational Services in 1967, a company which operated within the troubled teens industry. CEDU owned several for-profit therapeutic boarding schools, group homes, and behavior modification programs. The techniques used by CEDU schools were derived from Synanon's; for example, long, confrontational large-group sessions called "Propheets" took cues from the Synanon Game. CEDU went out of business in 2005, amid lawsuits and state regulatory crackdowns. Joseph "Joe" Ricci, a dropout from a direct Synanon-descendent program, founded a therapeutic boarding school called Élan School in 1970. Élan closed down in 2011 amid persistent allegations of abuse. Synanon's techniques also inspired the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), an umbrella organization of facilities meant for rehabilitating troubled teenagers. WWASP is no longer in business, due to widespread allegations of physical and psychological abuse. Many WWASP programs were shut down by the Costa Rican, Jamaican, and Mexican governments after investigations into allegations of abuse.
Practices
Troubled teen programs have been criticized for failing to offer evidence-based therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy or trauma- and violence-informed care. 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. Additionally, some TTI programs use a form of primal therapy, a discredited form of therapy which involves reenacting traumatic and painful moments such as rape. Many practices used in troubled teen programs, especially punishments, have been singled out as constituting child abuse or neglect. These include but are not limited to: restricting communication with family and peers; use of physical and chemical restraint (i.e., in the form of sedative drugs); use of seclusion as punishment; gay conversion therapy; excessive use of strip search and cavity search; denial of sleep and nutrition; aversion therapy; etc. In 2007, the Government Accountability Office published a study verifying thousands of reports of abuse and death in TTI facilities dating back to 1990. The National Disability Rights Network published a report in 2021 reporting common issues at troubled teen facilities including the aforementioned forms of abuse as well as chronic staffing shortages, deprivation of education, and unhygienic and unsafe facility conditions.
Transportation
Many troubled teen institutions offer youth transportation through teen escort companies, in which minors are transported to their facilities against their will. Parents who sign their children up for troubled teen camps will sign over temporary custody to the teen escort company. This transportation is a service offered in the United States and elsewhere, and is a practice that has been criticized on ethical and legal grounds as being akin to kidnapping. Some of the subjects report not realizing they were transported with permission of their parents until days afterward. Clients have reported being ambushed in their own beds at home, or tricked into believing they are going elsewhere. Those who have been in the troubled teen industry call this process "gooning". There have been incidents where transportation staff have impersonated government officials. Former clients of troubled teen programs have made efforts to pursue legal recourse through civil lawsuits targeting both parents and the companies associated with these programs.
Controversies
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