Troubled Teens Resources

“…the first two seasons of Intervention, viewers have been introduced to the enormous redneck crackhead who punched out his father; the teen meth addict working as a stripper; the single mom suffering from bulimia; and the young alcoholic father. Multiple or combined addictions are frequent on Intervention. Witness the gay man addicted to both sex and cocaine, or the tightly wound woman whose gambling binges are fuelled by crystal meth…”

Not to trivialize the stories of the families featured on Intervention, but you can’t help but notice that the themes of each of these individual’s real lives sound like the old and familiar scripts written for countless one hour dramas. It makes one pause to wonder what is it about humans that have us incessantly exchanging tales of woe, to seemingly linger over the inescapable fact that being human is often a painful proposition. One could hope that such intense fascination could instead be focused on healthy, thriving human beings. However, I don’t think a reality show that follows the lives of happy and productive families is on the horizon.

The jury is out as to how much good it does any of us to witness the ravages of drug and sundry other addictions in a reality format. The portraits of pain in these interventions are stark but we have seen it all before. In fact, without the grace of Hollywood lighting and makeup, real pain is ugly and clumsy. Unlike actors who facilely deliver polished dialog, real people sputter, spit and grope for words and anger is inarticulate and bruising.

If the series Intervention serves to encourage a broken family to seek help or to dissuade a troubled teenager from taking drugs, it can’t be dismissed. The danger is in trivializing both the concept of interventions and to keep America focused on broken people without enough attention paid to the broken people who do heal and carry on successful lives.

Unlike the series which typically ends with a decision - yay or nay - to therapy, the therapies and rehab programs that interventions set the stage for are merely the first tentative steps on a very hard, often boring, road to productive living. However, no camera will linger on an ex-addict struggling to learn basic life skills, like writing a budget, keeping a clean house or showing up regularly for work.

“But does it work? Intervention has been criticized by some health professionals for sensationalism and its drive-through approach to addiction counselling…And then there’s the woeful absence of follow-up…. There are no statistics provided on how many of the addicts successfully completed their rehabilitation and the program rarely revisits its case studies. All noble intent aside, Intervention lacks closure.”
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There has to be more stories that emphasize that not only do humans being become terribly broken, they can be terribly fierce about rebuilding what is broke.

That is what a real intervention is for, a first step in a fierce fight for life.

Have you ever wondered who you would be if you had never watched TV? If for your entire life you had developed opinions based on your own critical thinking as opposed to what some over paid pundit instructed you to think?

What if for every sit-com episode you’ve watched, you had read a book instead? Or gone biking. Or learned to dance. Why, I bet you’d be one knowledgeable, fit, entertaining person.

Now who would your teenager be if he had not absorbed the images, attitudes, violence and sensationalism he’s absorbed all of these years from the media. What ideas would he have imagined, what stories would he have written if for all these many years the media hadn’t supplied every idea and story, every song in his memory?

Wouldn’t we all, perhaps, be different people if we actually invested in who we are, if we explored our own lives instead of the lives of strangers in the latest reality show ? If we manufactured our own passions, dramas and hilarity.

According to a study out of England, published by the reputable Biologist magazine, media obsession is far more toxic than was ever suspected.

“Among the most disturbing findings are the links he claims to have found between long hours of television viewing and cancer, autism and Alzheimer’s.
[..]
The stage for the harm Dr Sigman believes television is doing is being set, he claims, by the vast amounts of it we watch - by the age of six, a child will already have spent one year in front of the television. When time in front of a computer is added, the psychologist claims watching a screen of some kind is the dominant activity for older children - those aged 11 to 15 now spend 55 per cent of their waking lives, or seven and a half hours a day, watching television and computers. According to today’s report, that represents a 40 per cent rise in a decade.

Dr Sigman claims the battery of ill effects takes its toll on both body and mind. He claims the effect on the brain is not stimulating, but almost narcotic, numbing the areas of the brain stimulated by, for example, reading.

The influence of modern editing techniques - for example the rapid “jump cuts” - also plays its part. Attention spans fracture while at the same time, according to Dr Sigman, the brain is programmed to reward itself with the neurotransmitter dopamine for being able to cope with an onslaught of novelty on screen.”

It sounds perhaps odd to suggest, but an experimental intervention of sorts would be an interesting exercise for a parent to stage. An at-risk teen is not likely to profit much -physically or emotionally- by spending half of their waking lives abdicating control of their thinking and senses to an artificial medium.

A troubled teen does not reach a crisis stage in one fell swoop. They approach the danger zones of drug abuse or destructive behavior by increments. Excessive ingestion of media is yet another contributing factor in an at-risk teens decline. You could even coin a phrase; “media abuse.” No, not as dangerous as drugs or alcohol, but yet one more experience that fails to add value to our teenager’s lives.

So why not some type of intervention to test the results? A week off the tube. Better yet a month. I am betting the results of such an experiment would be surprising and beneficial to the entire family. It might make all the difference in the world.