POV đ your treatment center is found liable for fraud
Before I dive in, let me preface this by saying that I personally do not feel nor ever felt overall traumatized from my experience going to my residential treatment center.
There are many people, some who read this newsletter, who used to work at my RTC for whom I have the utmost respect, and who have helped Colin and me in our mission to help young people with Not Therapy. I know this lawsuit has a profound impact on their lives, and none of what I write is directed toward any former staff or owners of my RTC. I donât support any of the public shaming or commentary directly targeting former staff; my feelings and opinions about my time at my RTC - both the positives and negatives - have not changed whatsoever in light of this lawsuit or verdict.
This might be a touchy email, and as always, we welcome everyoneâs feedback. As a reminder, this is just my experience as one young woman who attended this residential treatment center over 10 years ago. Itâs not meant to represent how any of my peers who attended before, during, or after my stay, feel about their time at our RTC or about the outcome of this court case.
These are my observations as someone whose treatment center was just held liable for three counts of fraud and must pay over $2.5m in punitive damages. Iâm not here to comment on the validity of the lawsuit or the outcome - I donât know enough about it.
What I will speak to is that dozens of young women who went to my RTC over the 25 years it was open showed up to court and/or testified. Based on the reactions Iâve seen from these young women on social media - some of whom I know, most of whom I donât - many feel that justice has been served.
But itâs not just a feeling of vindication. Based on social media comments from young women who attended my treatment center AND the reactions in my immediate friend circle, this outcome actually feels healing to all of us.
Why does this outcome feel so healing for alumni of this RTCâŠincluding myself??
I say âincluding myselfâ because I donât really identify with a lot of my peersâ public online discourse around the outcome of this court case, in that 1) I know little about the background of this lawsuit besides whatâs publicly available online, 2) on a personal level I wasnât really emotionally invested in the outcome beforehand, 3) going to this specific RTC kicked off my journey of improving my mental health and learning to live with a mental illness, 4) Iâve worked through my resentments I once held towards my program, and 5) this experience set me up to eventually use what I learned upon leaving treatment to start multiple companies helping young people with their mental health.
If anything, my feelings have turned into gratitude around my experience of being sent away and going to my RTC. Iâm grateful that I became a stronger, more self-aware person because I went to treatment. On the surface, I kind of look like the ideal spokesperson as to why this specific treatment center âworks.â So I was somewhat surprised at how I felt when I read the news.
SoâŠwhy does it feel as healing for me as it does for my peers who had legit terrible and traumatizing experiences at our RTC?
Healing aspect one â our treatment center has to be outwardly accountable for at least some of the practices that they (or the court) now find to be questionable, misleading, retraumatizing, or emotionally damaging.
Healing aspect two â our treatment center has to make tangible amends, via financial liability, to at least one family, which the jury decided was subject to some of the same âquestionableâ practices many of us endured. For the rest of us who had these same experiences at our RTC, the amends might be symbolic but it feels just as real.
In this case, our treatment center was held publicly accountable and has to make financial amends because they lost a lawsuit. And the amends are only technically going to one specific family, not all of the alumni.
But my reaction and the reaction of the other young women who went to my RTC to the outcome of this case helped me realize that programs have a clear path forward given the negative PR, lawsuits, etc. that the entire industry is facing.
If a treatment center is radically accountable without making excuses or defending its past methods, and if they couple that with making tangible amends to their alumni proactively, a program might very well be able to help at least some of their alumni heal, move forward, and access resources that can help them build the life they envision for themselves, regardless of where alumni land on the spectrum of feeling their program was helpful vs. damaging.
If you look at this purely from a business standpoint, programs can also just mitigate risk with their alumni and parents by doing this.
How programs can be accountable and make amends to their alumni.
Hereâs how a program can be proactively, and genuinely, accountable for policies and situations that were intentionally or unintentionally damaging to alumni:
State the specific methods that were once a part of the program that you now donât think were healthy or are not informed by evidence-based research. (i.e. making us wear different colored shirts based on our phase thus creating a somewhat toxic social hierarchy based on compliance and self-policing)
Say what youâre doing differently and what data youâre tracking to make sure that this leads to better outcomes. Also, please, for the love of all things good, specify what those outcomes are and how you measure them.
This is not the time for a program to talk about what theyâve been doing ârightâ all along. This is not a time to defend why they used these methods in the first place - remember that we alumni had to listen to staff remind us on a daily basis why the things we had to do while in treatment were âgoodâ for us. We get it, some of it was. But giving excuses nullifies the taking accountability piece.
Hereâs how a program can do to make amends to their alumni:
Connect your programâs alumni to one another, both in-person and online. Donât try to control it the outcome. Just give people each otherâs info and let them take it from there.
Set up your alumni with in-person and online communities that connect them with other young people who went to treatment.
Find solutions and resources beyond weekly therapy that you can recommend to them and their families.
Do not ask us to write you positive reviews or to talk about our authentic experience for PR purposes. Part of making amends is that you donât ask anything of the other person at all. Youâre just cleaning up your side of the street. Expect nothing on our end.
Ask alumni what else they need right now to help them move forward in their lives in general (not necessarily related to going to treatment) â this is how to get the best ideas of how to help a specific programâs alumni. i.e. I just wanted a strong female mentor who ran her own business for a long time. I found that in my AA sponsor. But imagine if my treatment center had a way of connecting me to a network of female business owners who were looking to mentor young women. Thatâs the type of thing that would make me write a positive review about my RTC.
This last point is why Colin and I are building the private, online community for anyone who has been to treatment and wants to improve their mental health while helping their peers do the same. Once weâre out of treatment, we all need slightly different types of support. One size doesnât fit all.
The power of our coming together as a community of treatment alums is that it takes the burden off of treatment centers (and parents) to help all of us individually after we leave.
Iâm sorry to say it, but living a successful life outside of the world of residential treatment is not in most programs' area of expertise (besides maybe addiction recovery treatment centers). But thatâs the nature of working in a residential program. Youâre in a bubble alongside the people who are actually in the program.
Program alumni are the experts on how to succeed or âfailâ after treatment. Our community is made up of those of us who have been through this experience, regardless of if we felt it was helpful or damaging, who are trying to improve ourselves by helping other young people on similar paths.
Do yourself a favor and take the burden of personalized post-treatment support off your shoulders. Send a few alumni (or your child) our way to sign up to be a founding member of our peer support community. They can learn everything they need to know here: nottherapy.me/community
If they join now and become a founding member, theyâll have lifetime access to the community for free. And theyâll be first in line to join the team and help build our next product for the community. The cut-off to join is July 2nd.
Donât be shy - send literally any young person our way who has been in treatment, and they can decide on their own if they want to join. Just send them to the website, and they will find all the relevant info in the signup form.
Canât wait to meet more young people who get it đ
And nowâŠâŠour vibes this weekđź
đ What weâre reading
How fertility clinics are scaring young women into freezing their eggs, businessinsider
Americaâs top export may be anxiety, the atlantic
đ¶ What weâre listening to
Tuesday, toro y moi
đĄ One last thought
THANKS FOR READING!
If you found this valuable, this is your signâïž to send this to parents or young people who can relate to the feelings weâre having this week so we can make sure they know theyâre not alone. Sharing is caring đ
Weâre in this to collaborate and support. Please feel free to reach out to us:
If youâre a parent who has a child in treatment, weâre happy to answer any of your burning questions and share our experience in treatment and with transitioning out!
If youâre passionate about changing the narrative in the therapeutic program industry.