McNuggies thoughts about the future after a stay in SUWS

This testimony was made by a former client of SUWS. All rights goes to the original author.

It's been 6 months since I came back from my experience at SUWS of the Carolina's. A hard 6 months to be exact. While there are far worse camps and schools to be sent to, SUWS was able to break me and attempt to "rebuild" me as how they think a human should be. Most of the members of the group I was with are now in TBS, which I luckily worked my way out of.

When I went to SUWS I weighed 155 lbs at 5'11. Currently I weigh 130 lbs at 5'11. That doesnt seem healthy of course but I cant even force my self to eat at this point. Thats only one issue SUWS has left me with. I picked up bad habits that I didn't have beforehand; such as cutting (before SUWS I had never attempted self harm in that manner) ,smoking (which I was able to stop), and binge drinking.

Other side effects of SUWS include what I think is PTSD where I have night terrors of being sent away again or waking up in the woods. It used to be every night and now its about 5/7 days a week. Since I get these dreams that wake and keep me up I am constantly tired. Sometimes I can't even stay away from home because my anxiety will go up about not being in my zone, which didn't happen before. And again with my eating, I can't eat certain foods such as peanut butter anymore because it gets me thinking of what happened over the summer which makes me sick and agitated.

One of the worse post-SUWS side effects is my constant apathetic attitude to literally everything. I'm a senior in high school who wanted to go to college right after high school. Those dreams have disappered because I can't get myself to care about my future. I only ever want to lay in bed. The lack of motivation doesn't stop there either, my school grades are falling and any activity I enjoyed pre-SUWS is impossible to start.

I've been to a therapist for the past 5 months after the one who sent me to SUWS said that I couldn't be her client considering the fact I wasn't going to boarding school. Therapy is not working it seems. I am way more depressed than ever before yet not suicidal. Yet I could care less what happens to me.
My parents have blamed my lack of motivation, tiredness, and lack of appetite on me 100%. If I try to bring what they sent me to over the summer up in a conversation they automatically say "We did it to save your life." But was it to save my life for my sake, or extend my suffering so they wouldn't feel guilty if something did happen? In all honesty I want to take legal action against anyone I can about the traumatic experience I went through and the side effects of that. Any advice on that (or anything) would be nice.

TL;DR: SUWS has made my life collapse in on itself harder than before, my parents won't hear me out, I'm blamed for every mistake

How can you comfort the author. To let the client know that the clients life wasn't lost like two teenagers who died in the program?

Sources:

• Update on My Current Situation (Reddit - the original testimony)
• Gregory Owens Jones (Today a child died memorial blog)
• Rocco D. Magliozzi (Today a child died memorial blog)
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)

An Industry in Need of Legal and Regulatory Oversight

The Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal published an article covering wilderness therapy and boarding schools focusing on behavior modification. The article - well documented - pictures the industry as an industry in huge need of both regulation and oversight.

Children die in wilderness programs. Others return home traumatized as result of their forcefully removal from their home. While few return home better suited for the harsh nature of life in general most return home with additional issues to struggle with.

Regulation and oversight has never been more needed. The politicians need to take action and ownership to spare the families and teenagers from further tragedies.


Source:
Wilderness Therapy Settings:
An Industry in Need of Legal and Regulatory Oversight (The Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal, by Daniel Pollack, Khaya Eisenberg, and Katie M. Shipp)

XOJane has an article about the lessons learned in wilderness programs

On the webpage of XOJane - a website where women go when they are being selfish, and where their selfishness is applauded - Julia Beatty tells her story about the lessons learned from a stay in wilderness therapy program in Montana when she was a young teenager.

Now years later she had time to reflect about the lessons learned. Her statement is that there are few lessons to take back into real life. The evaluation she received before entering the program failed to set a goal with her stay at the program. As result the stay in the program did only bring a time-out for her and her family.

It is an important lesson she gives to parents to a teenager suffering from emotional problems during the rite of passage towards adulthood.

Without a proper examination of the teenager before making the decision to send the teenager it is almost certain that the program would not benefit the teenager but rather make the rebellion harder.

Parents also have to take into consideration that most educational consultants and even employees of some of the wilderness program receive money from advising and referring clients to residential treatment programs or special boarding schools. Can they as parents be sure that they are given advices which are in the best interest of the teenager?

In no way!! Money is always more important than anything else. Most such special schools are run for profit. Living as an educational consultant is of course for profit so the idea that they receive money from both parents and program is common.

Julia Beatty was most finished struggling during adolescence when she returned home from the wilderness program. She had to meet ups and downs for years before she found her way of living an adult life. Life became very much the same as if she hadn't gone to the program. Her parent’s money was wasted.



Source:
IT HAPPENED TO ME: MY PARENTS SENT ME AWAY TO A WILDERNESS SURVIVAL CAMP (XO-Jane)

Can you ever go back?

A survivor from an unknown wilderness program asks on Reddit how she can return to normal life after having been banished to a wilderness program and another program.

And it is difficult. Only teenagers who have been banished and discarded from their family can understand the empty black hole they have in their hearts. They are also the only persons who can understand the ordeals and misery they had endured during the hikes; the starvation and the thirst when the guide’s loss track of their location as it happened in the wilderness.

Maybe it is why the teenagers find themselves abandoned by their friends who have kept their standards. It is impossible to explain the feelings and it might scare them off when the survivor speaks of things which should have been forbidden to expose minors to considering that we live in year 2013.

Their friends are simply not educated to deal with the issues any residential placement inflicts on the survivors. In many cases it takes professionals years - even decades to deal with the posttraumatic stress wilderness program often inflicts on the survivors.

Can you give meaningful advice to such a survivor?

It is difficult to answer.


Source:
Has anyone else experienced social anxiety after returning to normal life? (Reddit)

Blog: 63 Days in the Desert

This blog is a work in progress based on journals made many years before.

The wilderness program is the Challenger Foundation which transformed the wilderness programs from being positive outings to boot camp styled punishments. Did they plan ahead to secure that the children were secured by having backup teams ready with emergency supplies? No. They ran a risky operation and what history later told them were that they were lucky not to having killed more students.

Still despite the punishments and the ordeals these teenagers had to endure they got something from the programs. They got new friends they bonded with under pressure from the instructors. Until the former students die they will share the memories of friendships acquired under extreme circumstances.

However, maybe the price of these friendships was too high because they were forced to leave some behind. For teenagers like Kristen Chase the price was too high because she never made it back to her family.

Regardless of the opinion we have made of the program try to read the blog with an open mind. Everyone carried their own memories back home. Memories which would mark their lives forever.

Source:

• 63 Days in the Desert (Blog)
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

Blog: Challenger: Summer 1989

Before Challenger there were outbound programs where the goal was to give children from the cities a positive wilderness experience.

Challenger invented wilderness boot camps. Today no wilderness program will state that they are operated like a boot camp. They will use a lot of space trying to tell people that the main focus is therapy.

But the fact is that wilderness programs today function very similar to Challenger.

Another side effect is the children who die in programs. Challenger started this trend and wilderness programs continue to claim the lives of teenagers to this very day. Wilderness programs are not safe regardless of what programs like "Brat Camp" makes it look.

Wilderness programs are deadly!

The author behind the blog survived and she is using her diary to give the readers a rare insight in how it was to be an innocent teenager who was dragged out in the desert by strangers from their own bed without any warning in the middle of the night.

Sources:

• Challenger: Summer 1989
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)

Book: Janice's Journey

In 2006 a Danish teenager went on a holiday at her mother’s place or at least so she believed. As it turned out differences in the Danish and American youth culture meant that she found herself categorized as an at-risk teen despite being regarded a normal school girl in Denmark.

She has told her story to the Ylä Maatila who helped her rewrite her diary and various notebook entries into a biography which are published for free at Movellas.

Her story deals with the issue of being dumped in an alien culture with values very unlike the values she had been raised with.

Can she use the skills learned to change her destiny outlined for her due the special Danish structure with social classes structuring the future of young Danes based on their social heritage or will she return to Denmark having remained true to the cultural standards of her birth culture?

Link:
Janice's journey (by Janice Jensen and Ylä Maatila)