No.
Under Residential Team the website lists one doctor as “consulting physician,” claiming that he “completes all physicals and tends to basic medical needs.”
trailscarolina.com
I have worked with many teenagers and young adults who were gooned. They were so traumatized by the experience and developed MAJOR trust issues and sleep issues. They were terrified of getting gooned again and could not trust their parents at all. I am an alternative to using an adolescent transport service. Minors go with me voluntarily, I never come at night and I am completely transparent with them. I fly them all over the US to programs that I have personally visited and vetted. If I get a bad feeling/vibe/energy I do not use a program. There a few good wilderness programs, like less than 5. It takes so much work to get them to trust me and be willing to go with me on a plane or drive to a program if in drivable distance. I have never restrained any of them. Have I had them run away, or ditch me at an airport, sure. But we always end up making it to admission when they realize I do not sic their parents and or the police on them. I continue loving them while they push me away. And because of my personal background I have street creed with them. I tell them that I think gooning is kidnapping and that I would never send them somewhere I would not send my own teenager. Sometimes I pick them up from abusive teen programs and we go to a hotel while I negotiate admission into a good program. My heart always breaks when they tell me their stories. This type of trauma cannot be processed at an outpatient level of care successfully in my professional opinion.Another big-big bucks industry who targets many parents at their weakest if they're desperate to get their child help in what seems a helpless situation.
Transportation;
See also: Teen escort company
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.[26] 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.[27] Some of the subjects report not realizing they were transported with permission of their parents until days afterward.[28][2][29] Clients have reported being ambushed in their own beds at home, or tricked into believing they are going elsewhere.[30] Those who have been in the troubled teen industry call this process "gooning".[31] There have been incidents where transportation staff have impersonated government officials.[32] 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.[33]"
OMG!
Troubled teen industry - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
See above for various entries on "bivy bags".
www.vox.com
You could be forgiven for believing that this corresponds to any legal or medical theory of treatment. Parents often are.
quite possible. Any idea s to why he was naked from waist down? That is what I find most disturbing. That is an unusual way to sleep especially in the cold weather JMO
Thank you for the input on what and how you navigate these tragically sad and gut wrenching situations yet manage to obtain the trust of these young people who hurt beyond our comprehension.
That makes sense.
A very enlightening firsthand account of wilderness therapy.
Vox First Person: I went into the woods a teenage drug addict and came out sober. Was it worth it?
A large, unregulated wilderness therapy program treats thousands of teenagers each year. When I was 17, I was one of them.
According to the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs' definition, wilderness programs:
You could be forgiven for believing that this corresponds to any legal or medical theory of treatment. Parents often are.
These businesses tend to be in Utah. Or in Georgia. In any state where the law makes it easier for parents to sign over temporary custody, where small towns cannot betray them for fear of ruining the biggest business in town.
*
Group trust is also accomplished by breaking in new members; by pointed, communal humiliation. The first stick group I participate in is the reading of my "letter of accountability." Everybody has one.
The group is convened, a stick is cracked, and you are given a letter written by your parents. You have not read it before, and you will read it aloud now: a liturgy of disappointments and misbehavior, concern, well wishes. At the behest of the program it includes particular incidents, particular wrongs.
It is difficult to remain aloof after this experience. You are part of the group, and you will later read a reply you write to your parents, subject to critique by other patients. I feel like you're evading; I wonder if you're not rationalizing there. It is unclear if your peers are particularly concerned with the honesty of your reply. I never was.
But there are phrases you learn to say, evasions you learn to look for and point out. It is important that staff see that you have grown since you arrived, that you are now helping others through their difficult early days.
*
Second Nature's website is filled with videos. He speaks like a television pastor, like an infomercial for an animal charity. Your confusion and fear and concern can be transformed into a better future for your child and family.
Throughout the videos, certain themes recur. The environment is "secure," it is a "gift," it will "transform" everything from your child to your family to your life. "There's more than resignation and acceptance," one says; the child "invests" in their treatment. They "buy in." They "understand what's at stake" and "want to do the work."
Watching all of Second Nature's videos, it is clear that this is the program's fundamental promise: We will get your child to invest in what's happening to him. We'll direct your money to a consultant, we'll push him toward long-term care, we'll threaten you with your child's death to get him here, but at bottom we promise: Your child will leave an active collaborator in his good behavior. He'll be transformed.
But what, precisely, were we being transformed into?
We accepted that we were trapped. We accepted the logical and natural consequences of bad behavior. We discovered that our day-to-day happiness and our long-term prospects for freedom were dependent on buying in. We lied, at first. We spoke the program's language and performed the qualities they were looking for. Eventually these became routine.
I was not lying when I left, but I had not been transformed into a believer, either. It was only automatic: a vacant animation of the easiest way to get along and get out.
*
When I was in the wilderness, I believed I was pulling one over. We all did. We believed we had learned the language, played the part, that we had conned them. We believed we had escaped with our hearts intact. Not transformed, not really.
Did we? Or was this the object all along? Second Nature taught all of us how to pretend, how to better bury ourselves and be agreeable, to get along. It taught us precisely what is required in polite society. It allowed us to believe in our subterranean dissent, but who was conning whom, at bottom?
Is the health superficial? Does it matter?
Since it was declared not a "natural death" hopefully they have some damn good forensic people examining the boy's body and clothing and if they're not capable they call in experts from elsewhere.
Re: the former participant:
"And the parents said 'no.'"
