New Review: Help At Any Cost

The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:

An angry teenager loose in your house can be an awfully terrifying prospect. If it’s your teenager it’s even worse because (in theory) you actually love this person and you don’t want to see them get hurt. While it is typical for all teenagers to go through an oppositional and defiant stage in their development, when you add illicit drugs and underage sex into the mix with parents who are often ill-equipped to soothe the savage beasts running roughshod throughout their homes, you have a recipe for certain disaster.
In most cases, the average parent doesn’t want their child on drugs, even if they themselves are using drugs in the home. In the best of families, you’ll have parents who have never used drugs or have long since stopped, but will try everything in their power to dissuade their child from using. Some kids might respond appropriately, others will have some difficulty. Many kids will destroy household items, hurt a parent or sibling, and get arrested for being in possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia. Some will get arrested for selling the drugs they covet.

When life gets to this point and parents have nowhere else to turn, many will seek outside help. Often this begins with outpatient rehabilitation consisting of individual, group, and family therapy. But when that fails, as it often does, the system will just remove the child from the home and place them in residential care. Parents with money can seek out private residential rehabs, while others will have to settle for places the state recommends that are also covered by Medicaid.

Many of the residential programs kids are sent to, such as the one I work in, will do as much as possible to treat the clients with dignity and respect. In my program, it’s completely hands off, the gate is always open, and the clients can write grievances against the staff if they feel they are being treated unfairly. We also actually help many of the kids kick their drug habit and I’ve personally helped reunite over a dozen families since October 2005.

But there is a darker side to the helping industry that exposes an undercurrent of child abuse so pervasive that it has strong connections to the Republican Party. “Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids” by Maia Szalavitz catalogs the history of how abusive teen-help came into existence, how they’ve destroyed many kid's lives, and why they are allowed to continue operating today. What you’ll learn in this book will disturb and horrify any decent person with a conscience. Continued