Troubled Teens Resources

Can violent juvenile offenders be rehabilitated? If there were enough schools for troubled teens, military teen boot camps and rehabs - not to mention funding - could you actually extract the killer from the teen who murdered a family, or the juvenile rapist who slit the throat of their victim?

That debate is ongoing, with one side insisting that violent juveniles can be rehabilitated, the other side stating that returning these youths to society, at any time, would place innocent people at risk.

The comments following the article excerpted below paint a clear portrait of how deeply divisive the issue of violent teens is.

“According to a new report produced by the Equal Justice Initiative (a non-profit group dedicated to helping prisoners denied fair treatment by the system), American prisons are home to 73 inmates locked up for life for crimes they committed when they were 13 or 14. Bump that age limit up three years and we have 2,225 prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger.

These crimes aren’t minor — and the nature of our violent culture is an entirely different story — but some of the children confess under duress or, worse yet, are developmentally disabled. They languish in lockdown, without hope.

But are they proof that these children can’t be rehabilitated, that they can’t benefit from help and that they are beyond redemption?”
(source)

The more you read about troubled teens and the tumultuous world that they live in, the more you realize how critical their early years are. It seems that if you don’t start growing a teen right from the very start, the deep relationship and the mutual respect that parents and teens need to weather adolescence never is established.

A teen can, for all the world, seem stable and yet, make a misstep that plummets them down a disastrous path. Some parents spend their entire savings trying to get that teen back. Expensive rehabs, schools for troubled teens, psychotherapy and medication. And sometimes, no matter what the parents have done, the teen is lost.The ultimate fate of a teenager lies in their own hands, as much as parents would like to believe otherwise.

“When Cook learned that her teen daughter, Kayla, was abusing drugs, she went into overdrive. She and Kayla’s father shelled out $33,000 for nine months in a drug treatment program in Hamilton County. After that, Kayla stayed clean for a couple of months late last year. But the allure of drugs was too strong.

On the night of May 13, Kayla went to hang out with friends, and ended up with multiple drugs coursing through her veins. The 18-year-old girl lapsed into a coma. Three days later, she died…

Later that month, her classmates at Lebanon High School graduated without her.

Teen drug abuse deaths are rarely publicized, Cook said. “The parents and families are embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know their kid died from a drug overdose. I’m embarrassed that mine did.”

(source)

Sometimes all of the help in the world will not bring a drug addict around. Not schools for troubled teens, not rehab, not the tears of their mother nor the deaths of their friends.

“Right now, it’s tough love. I cannot continue funding. It’s not helping him.

“Once you’ve paid for nearly six rehabs, seen your mother distraught and frustrated watching her son waste his life with the abuse of drugs, they have to reach an all-time rock bottom that’s got no dependency on drugs.”

The quote above is from celebrity Chef Ramsay who has had to struggle with his brother’s heroin addiction for decades. Addicts are always extremely selfish. They will put the satisfaction for their cravings above all that they claim to hold dear and before all whom they swear that they love. Addiction not only ravages the mind and the body. It simply turns the user into an ugly cipher, a user and a deceiver. The friends that you see at an addict’s funeral are usually old friends, friends who had to turn away. Addicts have no real friends, just people that they share their drugs, needles and diseases with.

Isn’t that a lovely picture?

What teens absolutely do not realize is that their week-end parties and their “harmless pot” can turn them into somebody that they themselves would loathe. Someone that they would cross the street to avoid. And it doesn’t end until they have the guts to end it.

“They’ve got to have that self-belief that they’re strong enough to fight it.”
[…]
“Anyone using drugs anywhere in the world has a choice. It’s not a disease.

(source)

Related:

• Teen Drug Abuse Enslaves