“Help” Care News, Teenage Nightmare, Troubled Waters, Getting Your Goat

“Help” Care News, Teenage Nightmare, Troubled Waters, Getting Your Goat

“Help” Care News, Teenage Nightmare, Troubled Waters, Getting Your Goat 2121 1414 AEPC Health

Imagine for a moment that you are once again a teenager. Perhaps you were argumentative, defied rules at school and home or engaged in other behaviors that made your parents more than cringe. Your parents took away certain privileges, layered on more rules as their frustration with you grew. They told you to change or else. Or else what you wondered.

One summer night, like countless others, you were home asleep in your bed having successfully avoided your parent’s lights out at 11:00 pm rule by a few hours. Your sleep is interrupted by voices in your room that are not those of your parents. Two men who could have passed for bouncers or law enforcement tell you that they are from the transport service for the wilderness camp that your parents are sending you to. Your parents stand in the doorway and nod, saying that this is what is best for you. As you are led to a car, your parents are nowhere in sight and likely do not even hear your pleas to not go. But go you will from the car with blacked out windows, to the flight to Utah to the wildness camp for troubled teens.

You hike for miles each day and lay exhausted every night on the ground under a hurriedly pitched tent. You quickly learn that the camp staff responds to complaints of hunger or exhaustion with verbal and physical humiliation in front of the group. Every 2 weeks you see a counselor for an hour who absurdly asks how you are doing. Your parents hope this expensive camp will change your behavior; you question your ability to survive as fellow campers share stories of other who died by suicide.

This likely never happened to you. It did happen to the high school senior in my neighborhood who I spent many an hour with as our dogs played together. A good kid that just could never get to school on time, decided to take a hiatus from brushing his teeth and showering every day and was not a fan of family activities. He did not use drugs or alcohol, never any legal trouble, and showed no violent tendencies. His parents labeled him a troubled teen.

Well-meaning parents often turn to wildness camps after a multitude of different parenting approaches and counseling sessions fail to change their teen’s behavior. An educational consultant and wildness camp management, both of whom have a financial stake in the matter, sell the program’s “benefits” – providing parents new hope. Helping their teen outweighs the $600 or more a day cost and the thousands of dollars in other fees for the 30 plus day program. Anecdotal stories of success with other teens serves as a replacement for the absence of research demonstrating the program’s effectiveness. Will it help the troubled teen? Check out Teenage Nightmare to learn more!

This Weekend Reading Series begins with “Help” Care News, with some of the latest helpful healthcare stories. Next, check out Teenage Nightmare offering insights on the trouble teen wildness camp industry.  Do not miss Troubled Waters, with articles on concerning trends that can impact healthcare outcomes. Last, but not least, check out Getting Your Goat and my personal favorite, Do the Goats Like Goat Yoga? An Investigation.

I hope you enjoy the following:

1. “Help” Care News

2. Teenage Nightmare

3. Troubled Waters

4. Getting Your Goat

Enjoy the weekend!

Best,

Suzanne

Suzanne Daniels, Ph.D.
AEPC, President
P.O. Box 1416
Birmingham, MI 48012
Email: [email protected]

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