Three Springs, Ridge Creek School (formerly Hidden Lake Academy), Tranquility Bay. The above are three of many vastly different institutions which, with parental consent, attempt/ed to help troubled adolescents through intensive behavioral modification, often for a good deal of cash. There are many, many such institutions throughout the United States and the world.
My question: do these institutions generally help or harm adolescents in their development? I am interested in what psychologists have said on the subject and (primarily) in studies of these institutions’ effectiveness. I have heard that there are no such studies because this is such a relatively new treatment technique, but I don’t know if that is true; if it is true, how can so many responsible parents send their children to such an institution (or are they responsible?)? Are there better and more effective alternative methods of treatment for Oppositional Defiant Disorder and related disorders/addictions for which these kids are sent to these schools?
Never been in the ones you cite but I’m a survivor of Deer Park in Houston TX, another behavior-mod tank where all approval-strokes and all disapproval-strokes are (at least in theory) under the conscious control of the folks in charge of the institution.
It took me 6 weeks to get out of that damn place. I did manage to polarize them but could not get them to kick me out. Instead they made an exception to general no-drugs rule and opted to drug me up with Navane, a variant on Stelazine and Thorazine. I took one dose, zoned out for a few hours, took the evening dose and again zombied for 4-6 hours, then borrowed a table knife and… you’ve seen those double doors whereby one door has a static pushrod holding it stationary by sliding into a matching hole in the ceiling? Parallel doors with push bars to open them? There was a chain wrapped around the push bars but I used the table knife to remove the contraption that held the left hand door stationary, and once that was gone I pushed, the doors spread apart, and I slipped thru the crack in between and hitched the bloody hell out of the state of Texas, thereby becoming an official escaped schizophrenic (as they had marked me down on the chart).
Behavior mod tanks are not a lot of fun if you do not like being coerced. Reward and punishment behavior mod is coercion. Any deliberate manipulation of another person’s behavior without consulting that person’s free will is coercive.
I found that behavior mod tank personnel do not appreciate having their methods analyzed and dissected in detail and pointed out to them.
I found that behavior mod tank personnel (and institution owners) do not appreciate you sharing thosse insights with other inmates of the behavior mod tank.