remaking teens: shock treatment, NY Times, new book on trauma

Here are some updates related to the troubled-teen industry - a news update on a publicly funded program administering electric shocks to teens for things like swearing; and what champion expose journalist Maia Szalavitz is up to now.

Maia Szalavitz ("Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids" Riverhead, 2006 ) wrote an op-ed which appeared Sunday in the New York Times City Section regarding "aversive" tough-love therapies for kids.

New York State has been sending children to a Massachusetts program that uses electric shocks delivered to the skin as "therapy;" it has also been paying for some teens with learning disabilities and emotional problems to attend the Elan School in Maine.

Elan is best known for its humiliating and confrontational tactics, including, until recently, forcing teens to fight fresh opponents with boxing gloves in a tactic known as "the ring" until they submit to the school's demands.

An article Maia wrote on the troubled teen industry appears in Reason here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/117088.html

Also, this month Maia's new book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us about Loss, Love and Healing, will be published by Basic. She sys, "It's co-written with leading child trauma expert Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, and looks at how trauma affects the developing brain and personality and what can be done to help affected children. Dr. Perry does amazing work-- and his case histories illustrate why kind, patient and loving attention is absolutely imperative in helping troubled children and how coercive therapies do damage. "