FACTS

100,000+ youth every year will find themselves in the "Troubled Teen Industry", the popular term for the network of therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness programs, residential treatment centers and boot camps throughout the United States, that is made up of both public and private businesses, centered around providing therapeutic treatment for minors with behavioral issues, psychological disorders or learning disabilities, and that exists mostly free from government oversight and regulation.

Many children in the industry are sent by their families, who are often well intentioned and under the belief that they are doing what is best for them, not understanding the terrifying reality of their actual experiences until years or decades later. This is due to communication almost always being censored and both children and parents being indoctrinated to believe that admittedly difficult methods are necessary yet effective.

Many youth are taken to programs by escort services who use handcuffs, hoods, or other restraint tactics, and sometimes do not tell children where they are being taken or even who orchestrated it, leading to long term trauma.

In these programs, teens are, in many cases, punished or broken down through a variety of methods including psychological or physical abuse (screaming, berating, false accusations…), attack therapy, food or sleep deprivation, forced labor, isolation/solitary confinement, physical or chemical restraint, censorship, and exposure to extreme temperatures or weather conditions.

Abuse is not infrequent. During 2005 alone, 33 states reported 1,619 staff members involved in incidents of abuse in residential programs, as reported by the GAO. It is important to note that there is no evidence this number has declined in recent years, and these are just the reported incidents, and the assumed actual number is much, much higher.

Over 400 teens have died while involuntarily committed in the past 55 years alone, with many of those deaths being directly caused by staff ineptitude or neglect.

A large number of staff members are recent graduates, entirely unprepared nonprofessionals, or even former students/residents with no further qualification to support their working with "troubled teenagers".

In the US, there are likely several thousand TTI programs, however, due to a complete lack of reporting, there is no way to know with certainty how many total programs exist.

Many programs prohibit children from contacting their families or advocates and handle any complaints of maltreatment or abuse internally without reporting to authorities.