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sounds pretty much indistinguishable from prison, except even in prison they rarely drug you (only if you're lucky) pretty crazy that a place designed to heal and help is almost exactly equivalent to a place designed to punish and incarcerate. same goes for the Elan school
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Feb 11, 2020 23:45
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GolfHole posted:proscribed sentence: guillotine Tiffany's will barred her family from collecting her body or coming to her memorial service and honestly I do not blame her.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:47
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That comic was hosed up I couldn’t stop reading it. And we think he ended up back there? ☹️ Paid child kidnappers? What the gently caress??
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Feb 12, 2020 00:06
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Yep! Here's a fun article from a few years ago. https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1680-5-things-i-learned-escaping-troubled-teens-facility.html From a linked page that offers these services: quote:What Is a Teen Transport Service? Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Feb 12, 2020 |
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Feb 12, 2020 00:13
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Liquid Communism posted:Yep! Talkin about your teen like a troublesome pet
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Feb 12, 2020 00:22
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/28/now-we-are-five This article made me loving hate David Sedaris. E: I mean, I always hated him, especially when he's on This American Life, but now I really hate him and feel justified for doing so. What a loathesome rear end in a top hat. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Feb 12, 2020 |
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Feb 12, 2020 00:23
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I couldn’t imagine having people kidnap my kid and then sending them to one of these hell holes, you’re basically saying to your child, we’re never going to have a relationship again and I don’t care about you or your agency In terms of the Elan school where the gently caress are all the kids that eventually got out how did this thing run for almost 40 years wth
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Feb 12, 2020 00:31
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Inzombiac posted:Thank you for posting this. Surely it can't be easy to talk about but know that it is really appreciated. It used to be hard to talk about it, but a lot of people eventually reach a point where it's no longer an uncomfortable subject because whatever residual shame you feel for having been put through that crap and being powerless is totally and utterly overcome by the pure anger you feel over them continuing to do this poo poo to other people. Telling people the truth about it means one more person learning to detest that place a fraction as much as I do and possibly prevents someone else from going there or being sent there, which makes me happy. These places profit and operate off of people staying quiet so part of their MO is cowing you into submission and refusing that is part of the way it helped me get over it. At this point the total injustice of the fact that the place is still open and still taking in kids and adults at their most vulnerable and needy means I have no qualms talking about it. I don't feel ashamed about having been committed anymore, they want you to feel like you're in that institution for being a gently caress up or acting like a mentally ill lunatic so your guilt will overcome your desire to act out or spread word about how poo poo they are. That's really how it fucks with you the most after you leave. They punish you whenever you do anything that bothers them so even once you're out you've spent months being taught that standing up to authority or that emoting with anger when you're ignored or disregarded with virtually any "reasonable" emotion or expression is inevitably your fault for being disagreeable or demonstrating aspects of your mental illness. That can result in you constantly grappling with and distrusting virtually anyone meant to help you, so goodbye being honest to your therapist or psych, they've hosed you into completely distrusting anyone who purports to practice mental healthcare. They've literally mindfucked you into being unable to benefit from real, honest care. Either that are you become so submissive and quiet that you never challenge anyone or anything and constantly blame yourself for everything, even when your anger towards someone else is totally justified you might blame yourself for it. No one is there to teach the people with anger problems how to cope, hell, there's no one there teaching coping methods period. You're presumably in there to overcome whatever episode or action put you in there, but without therapy you can't possibly ever do that, not that you would even be able to benefit from it if you did, since the anxiety/depression/apathy the heavy dosages of medication will conflict with any reasonable care and mask the issues that put you in there in the first place. They will effect your ability to function normally for years, if not a lifetime. It took me years to fix my extreme distrust of healthcare to get actual, decent treatment. Now I have proper medication and therapy and I accomplished more in the past few years than the five years after I left that shithole. I can't imagine how much more I would have been able to do, how much lovely emotion I could have avoided with my severe ADHD and anxiety if it hadn't been for that place essentially destroying my ability to benefit from healthcare for so long. And I can't even imagine how much people who spent years in programs like Elan have had taken from them. How many normal happy relationships it might have ruined because of the hosed up socialization within the program. How many lives its taken both through robbing kids of potential and condemning them to a lifetime of dealing with trauma or outright taking their own lives. How many people basically were conditioned to be sociopaths and end up using the Elan attitude to abuse others. The guy writing the comic also had to contend with Elan's nationwide influence which sounds nightmarish. I obviously never had to worry about anyone trying to shut me up. Some people want to put it behind them, and that's more than fine, they've had their share of suffering and abuse and deserve and have more than readily earned the right to leave it in their past, but other people refuse to let it go because it's still happening across the entire country.
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Feb 12, 2020 00:31
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GolfHole posted:proscribed sentence: guillotine Sedaris’ father in particular was straight-up abusive.
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Feb 12, 2020 00:54
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How My Sister Selfishly Ruined Buying A Beach House For Me - an essay by David Sedaris
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Feb 12, 2020 00:58
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What the gently caress is that article? I've never cared for Sedaris, his writing style is kinda lame and muddled. But this is more like him being a poo poo. Why'd she do it? Oh, I'unno. Can't have anything to do with this one specific thing she repeatedly refers to.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:13
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Liquid Communism posted:https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1680-5-things-i-learned-escaping-troubled-teens-facility.html that whole document just bizarre to read. I kept forgetting that "teen" was referring to an actual person instead of some rare, mysterious animal
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Feb 12, 2020 01:17
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Hey I was a bit flippant earlier about my experiences in mental health facilities and I now understand that my experience is probably different from most people since apparently the whole mental health industry is rotten to the loving core and I"m really sorry about that.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:18
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Play posted:that whole document just bizarre to read. I kept forgetting that "teen" was referring to an actual person instead of some rare, mysterious animal It's like when people describe infants as "baby" like "What are the best clothes for Baby?" it's kinda dehumanizing, even towards a person who hasn't developed object permanence yet
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Feb 12, 2020 01:20
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Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:It used to be hard to talk about it, but a lot of people eventually reach a point where it's no longer an uncomfortable subject because whatever residual shame you feel for having been put through that crap and being powerless is totally and utterly overcome by the pure anger you feel over them continuing to do this poo poo to other people. Telling people the truth about it means one more person learning to detest that place a fraction as much as I do and possibly prevents someone else from going there or being sent there, which makes me happy. These places profit and operate off of people staying quiet so part of their MO is cowing you into submission and refusing that is part of the way it helped me get over it. At this point the total injustice of the fact that the place is still open and still taking in kids and adults at their most vulnerable and needy means I have no qualms talking about it. Part of why I'm so angry about this stuff is that I missed out on it by a pretty slim margin as a kid myself. My mom pulled the 'we're going to go down and check out this school this weekend' on me, and I called my Dad because I knew I wasn't allowed to leave the state without permission from both of them. Ended up in me moving in with him a few hours later.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:30
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Julius CSAR posted:Hey I was a bit flippant earlier about my experiences in mental health facilities and I now understand that my experience is probably different from most people since apparently the whole mental health industry is rotten to the loving core and I"m really sorry about that. That's fine. In cases like mine these places exist because the infrastructure for mental healthcare is obscenely poor in my local area. This is a state and city that has a large inner city, poor, and black population and as usual that means it receives little to no attention, care, or proper facilities. The institutions here for the most part only exist to hold the mentally ill and control them within that environment because any sort of appreciable care is beyond the possible scope of anything beyond a dedicated and well staffed residential system, which obviously is never going to be funded here. As such they only operate to produce enough money to perpetuate themselves and stay in business which would be undercut and rendered more difficult with competent staff or helpful treatment programs from professionals. They do the bare minimum to subsist. As little staff as possible, as few professionals as possible while still meeting the legally required minimum standard of care (which is an obscenely low standard). Most people are sent to the hospital and discharged after a day or two of observation, anyone else is sent to one of a small handful of programs if they are deemed sufficiently compromised (which of course, is completely arbitrary due to how poor and cursory these assessments are under a strained mental health system). Naturally you are forced to use an ambulance since they want to keep track of you (huge chunk of money) and then billed for the duration of your stay at the facility. If you're lucky and you know exactly how to act to play down their suspicions you can convince them you'll be fine with outpatient programs, which you can then promptly never show up to because at that point they have no interest in you if they can't hold you. Places like Elan don't function necessarily the same, since the tuition is so high, but they also prey on a lack of appropriate treatment for troubled individuals in a similar fashion. It's easy to be overwhelmed by actual, effective care because that involves individualized treatment that occurs over a long, long period of time. A kid going to therapy for acting out still lives with his parents and will still likely display problematic behavior over the course of his care. It's a slow painful process that requires inordinate amounts of patience and faith in the system. The appeal of Elan is that you wash your hands of your troublesome kid, don't have to deal with him anymore, and rather than the anomalous, personalized care of a therapist or psychiatrist, they are placed in a regimented, highly generalized program that asserts it will mold them into a productive and agreeable person without any of that waffling around or having to deal with bullshit, and since many people willing to do this to their kids are highly about forcing a kid into the status quo and conformity, they see hyper regimented and disciplined environments as a way to beat their kids into shape, rather than the stifling, trauma inducing factories they are. It's similar to threatening your kid about sending them to military school. Getting thrown in a lovely mental health institution is much the same because of the completely warped public perspective. Much like prison people think you walk in there, do whatever it is you do in there, and walk out better and less troublesome. It's an easy attitude to adopt because it's not complicated and it allows you to believe there is an easy solution to disruptive individuals which merely amounts to controlling them and "setting them straight" by placing them in extraordinarily strict circumstances with no freedoms. One of the ways they get away with this poo poo is by shrouding the reality of it to the public, so being ignorant that some places just plain are this bad compared to other, reasonable and humane programs is a struggle, especially because the people they target are socially perceived to be troublesome and deceitful.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:46
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I think the kind of parents who would believe their kid that this kind of school was a cult would be the kind of parent who wouldn't have sent them there in the first place. Like the comic explains how they manipulate people into believing their lies and how this could work on you. But I don't think my mom would be ok with sending me away for 6 months or longer with barely any contact. The school district was trying to paint me as a problem student and they probably did try to sell this poo poo to my parents. I am very lucky to have parents who didn't just side with the school and stood up for me when I needed them too.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:06
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Mappo posted:I think the kind of parents who would believe their kid that this kind of school was a cult would be the kind of parent who wouldn't have sent them there in the first place. They likely don't know what it really is but these places are sold using that image, that it's going to make your kid tough, dependable and disciplined through regimen and an environment where priveleges are earned through responsibility, and where they learn to shed over individualistic "phases" like wearing piercings or listening to loud metal or other nonsense overly conservative parents take as bad signs. On paper that's really no different than what military schools or the Boy Scouts or any number of other "We'll make your boy a man"-esque programs offer. On some level they all use programming to various degrees but obviously not nearly to such an insane degree. Our culture already normalizes it to the point that parents won't find a program like that suspicious, private boarding schools also have you sending your kid off for a period of time. So it's easy for these to seem normal when they're a thousand times worse.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:17
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This poo poo terrifies me
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Feb 12, 2020 02:50
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Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:They likely don't know what it really is but these places are sold using that image, that it's going to make your kid tough, dependable and disciplined through regimen and an environment where priveleges are earned through responsibility, and where they learn to shed over individualistic "phases" like wearing piercings or listening to loud metal or other nonsense overly conservative parents take as bad signs. On paper that's really no different than what military schools or the Boy Scouts or any number of other "We'll make your boy a man"-esque programs offer. On some level they all use programming to various degrees but obviously not nearly to such an insane degree. Our culture already normalizes it to the point that parents won't find a program like that suspicious, private boarding schools also have you sending your kid off for a period of time. So it's easy for these to seem normal when they're a thousand times worse. Programs like these are sold as a package solution to parents who have given up on parenting a difficult child. Even if that difficulty is just 'I don't believe in your religion' or 'I'm gay/bi/trans/ace'.
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Feb 12, 2020 02:53
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The comic probably contributed to my poor sleep last night and continuing to read this thread likely won't help with things tonight. That "troubled teen industry" is even a term which exists is gross as hell. The whole screaming, peal-clutching "whatever shall we do with these OUT OF CONTROL TEENS???" feels like such a boomer thing. Play posted:that whole document just bizarre to read. I kept forgetting that "teen" was referring to an actual person instead of some rare, mysterious animal It's real loving weird. A teenager isn't a goddamn alien, it's a human child, your child, you were one, too at some point. Jesus christ are some people grossly unfit to be parents.
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Feb 12, 2020 03:35
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The past 15 years or so I've existed in similar structures, as I'm an alcoholic in recovery who has, at times, destroyed my life to the degree that I literally have nothing, am sleeping in bushes, behind buildings, in my car (when I had one) and so on. War stories. Nothing pretty, but peppered with moments of pure beauty sometimes. I've been to two rehabs (one much better than the other), detox centers for weeks (which is much worse), thousands of AA meetings, and even now am typing this from a sober living home. I even was a boy scout and went to an all-boys catholic high school. These varied systems for programming are omnipresent and absolutely exist from mild forms to extremely aggressive versions all across America (can't speak for outside of that, though I feel like there's a pervasive desire to have the child adopting a sort of mythical 1950s "Americana" ideal, right?). Reading this reminded me a lot of that sort of thing, these various structures I've spent a lot of time weaving in and out of. I read that comic and it was horrifying. Thanks for sharing it. Sometimes people ask me on here to do an A/T of the whirlwind of calamity and serenity that my life has been. Maybe I should! Anyway, this whole subject kept getting under my skin, though I know it's not the same as being shoved into a boarding school from Sleepers exactly. I felt it. I feel that weight of authority and that awful desire to placate the punisher by doing what they ask. It's a perverted relationship that has, of course, been utilized for great financial gain by individuals. Hey, on a positive note, I'm 5 months sober today.  Good thread, I read the comic all through my work breaks today.
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Feb 12, 2020 03:43
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Liquid Communism posted:Programs like these are sold as a package solution to parents who have given up on parenting a difficult child. Even if that difficulty is just 'I don't believe in your religion' or 'I'm gay/bi/trans/ace'. That's basically what I was getting at with the public idea that institutions are uniform programs of addressing social and mental health issues (or in the case of gay conversion, complete horseshit that isn't even a problem that needs addressing) that can cure any problem behavior as a whole. It's easy money because for ignorant people it's an easy solution.
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Feb 12, 2020 04:36
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There should be a 'to catch a predator' style program of this where parents are asked if they'd like burly men to kidnap their daughter in the night, and when they sign of on it the cops just immediately charge in and take the parents away.
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Feb 12, 2020 06:14
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Why don't parents parent their children  . If you want your son to 'man up' or whatever why not take him for a week of fishing and shed building like a normal person??? People who send their kids to cult school are probably not normal or sane. I mean you gotta be crazy for doing something like that.
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Feb 12, 2020 06:20
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Suspect A posted:Why don't parents parent their children I could have seen my parents doing this to me, both grew up poor from hard line abusive catholic families. I wasn’t a bad kid but the corporal punishment for “acting up” as a kid would be considered abuse nowadays and probably put them into jail multiple times. poo poo sucks there’s a lot of bad parents out there unfortunately.
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Feb 12, 2020 06:29
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Floodixor posted:Hey, on a positive note, I'm 5 months sober today. Congrats, and good for you. I have also struggled with substance abuse, and I'm lucky to not have been in one of the places talked about ITT. It is daunting to know that so many places designed to "help" in our system are just singularly terrible, and it terrifies me. I know when I started having "issues" back in my teen years I thought that checking yourself in was some kind of solution and that just doesn't seem to be the case at all. I assume there are helpful programs out there, but they cost fortunes. 
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Feb 12, 2020 09:27
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There was a documentary made about Elan with a lot of victims interviewed. https://youtu.be/W93JfLTpAM0 I have been trying to track down a copy for a week now and no luck. If anyone knows how I can watch this let me know. If I can't figure something out I'm going to contact the filmmakers - I think they're trying to get it a wide release before they make it publicly available.
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Feb 12, 2020 09:58
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TheAardvark posted:There was a documentary made about Elan with a lot of victims interviewed. Looks like it's still only showing on theater circuits, a shame, I'm interested too, they'll probably come out with a physical media release eventually.
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Feb 12, 2020 10:12
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I don't doubt the crap that went on at the school, but that comic gives off real creative writing vibes to me.
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Feb 12, 2020 11:00
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My experiences with the mental health industry were after high school and therefore as a supposed adult, and only by proxy via a former partner. I could go for pages about all the reasons I hate the mental health industry, but it was never as nightmarish and oppressive as anything I've read from that comic. I could visit my partner every day if I wanted to, call them anytime, had full meals, could wander the premises freely so long as they weren't disruptive, etc. But I also know that part of the reason they turned out okay was because they had me and their family supporting them and checking in and making sure they were fine. And the hospitals still tried to pull some poo poo that we had to fight them on, and it's obvious the doctors and nurses would have gotten away with it if my partner didn't have us looking out for them; which regrettably a lot of folks in those spots probably do not, and so they get exploited, neglected and lost in the system. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm kind of shocked to find out that stuff at Elan has also been common practice in traditional mental health institutions, but I can't say that I'm honestly surprised either, given my experiences. Sherry Bahm fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Feb 12, 2020 |
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Feb 12, 2020 11:03
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The stuff they did at Elan is also similar to how mentally-challenged kids at special schools were treated. My uncle got shunted to one in the early 60s because his (now we know it is) autism didn't fit my Dick Whitman/Don Draper grandfather's concept of The Perfect White East Coast We Are Totally Not Immigrants and Did I Mention White??? American Family. He never, ever talks about it, but no one in the family ever recovered.
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Feb 12, 2020 11:06
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Is anyone else loving terrified of The Corner? I would absolutely rather take a fight club with multiple bigger dudes than the prospect of being put in solitary confinement with only a chair for months. Jesus christ.
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Feb 12, 2020 11:22
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I think it's stuff like The Corner that really screwed me up the most while reading all that. Even within an oppressive environment with other people who enforce it, you're at least kind of in it together, so to speak? Solitary confinement has been proven to just be inhumane on so many levels.
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Feb 12, 2020 11:33
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lmao look at this quote from Wikipediaquote:The New York State Education Department, which has paid tuition for special education students to attend Élan School, gave the school a favorable review in 2005. they were literally putting special education students in. does "special education" mean violent/drug addicted in school lawyer parlance somehow? Or were they literally sending special needs children to torture camp? i'm gonna fuckin barf edit: keep in mind this is 2005, 4 years after a public trial included testimony of The Ring and other poo poo
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Feb 12, 2020 11:41
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I thought this was going to be about the Elan school of thought in warfare.
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Feb 12, 2020 14:56
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TheAardvark posted:lmao look at this quote from Wikipedia Cool 2005 was when I started HS, cool cool cool cool cool cool. And special education can mean anything it wants to mean when the check clears. I knew a neurodiversity activist from MA and autistic kids get some horrific poo poo done to them, Elan included, instead of “how about you approach this human being with a tinge of understanding and worth”. Totes legal!
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Feb 12, 2020 14:57
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Proud Rat Mom posted:I don't doubt the crap that went on at the school, but that comic gives off real creative writing vibes to me. it sounds fantastic but once you research it in different places like reddit/youtube/various forums/etc survivors come out of the woodwork and all use the same terminology and report the same exact things
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Feb 12, 2020 18:22
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_School_for_Boys This school in Florida lasted 111 years before closing. It's insane that it lasted as long as it did. A professor in my department when I was going to college was the forensic anthropologist who was heading the identification of the individuals found in the mass grave. The Dozier School has been an extremely controversial situation and a giant clusterfuck in terms of funding, research, and the question of what to do with the bodies found. Families contacted sometimes didn't even know that family member existed. What does the family do? Pay for a funeral for someone they don't know? Blah blah blah we all know Florida is a backwards place but the Dozier School is hosed up even for Florida. I'm blown away people don't discuss what happened there more. As far as I know USF is still in the midst of identifying graves/remains, but nothing is ever brought up about the people responsible for what took place.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:00
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ArchNemesis posted:it sounds fantastic but once you research it in different places like reddit/youtube/various forums/etc survivors come out of the woodwork and all use the same terminology and report the same exact things No I believe the horribleness of the school, just this account of it seems fake. The stories surrounding it are written in true stdh fashion. He escaped by dramatically pepper spraying his parents and teenage guard in a hotel, gets a dramatic will he won't he rape me ride from a Vietnam vet who validates his suffering, then he gets to New York and the first cafe he gets to some 'urban kids' who harrass him until he defeats them by screaming facts and logic at them.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:24
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