The Troubled Teen Industry Throughout the Years

There are plenty of horror stories about mental illness treatment centers that go back decades. To understand the background of this industry, we have to go back to the ’80s. While legwarmers and Jane Fonda workout tapes held this decade in a chokehold, so did deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization became popular in 1963 when John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act. He signed the Community Mental Health Act because of his sister, Rosemary Kennedy. She had a prefrontal lobotomy and was left permanently incapacitated. JFK intended this legislation to be freeing and comforting for mentally ill people in institutions, thinking of his sister, but it did not come out to be like that. Most citizens did not become aware of deinstitutionalization until the 1980’s when it became a national concern. The deinstitutionalization of mental patients grew into chaos very quickly. With homicide and homelessness rates growing, the public turned to their president. 

1980’s

Ronald Reagan became president in late 1980. President Reagan was exposed to the consequences of untreated illness many times in his life and presidency. Two months after taking office, he was shot by John Hinckley, a young man with untreated schizophrenia. Reagan’s personal tax advisor, Roy Miller, had two sons who both developed schizophrenia that did not get treated. One committed suicide in 1981, and the other son killed his mother in 1983. Many say that President Reagan did not “understand” mental illness despite the personal exposure, and never expressed any interest in research for mental health nor any resources for mental health.

There is no doubt that mentally ill people have been mistreated from the start, but it rose to the headlines in the 80s. Mentally ill teenagers were often labeled “bad influences” or “problem kids”. These labels are extremely harmful, especially to young people. 

Rebecca Smith froze to death in a cardboard box on the streets of New York in 1982. She had been valedictorian of her college class before her struggles with mental illness. The media saw Lionel Aldridge struggle in 1983. He was the former all-pro linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. Aldridge had developed schizophrenia and had been homeless for several years. There was a study in 1984 that showed 38% of homeless people in Boston during that time were severely mentally ill. This confirmed the suspicion that many homeless people had previously been patients in the mental hospitals that were emptied out. There are so many stories about people dying because of JFK and Ronald Reagan’s personal choices to deinstitutionalize state mental hospitals, and these are just a few. 

1990’s 

People were still suffering, no one was doing anything, and the mental health crisis started on a steady plummet down to rock bottom. After learning about many stories from this decade, I learned that if you didn’t have money for therapy or boarding school, there were barely any resources for mentally ill people to get help from. Sadly, these programs had no separate sections for age groups, so these teens were sent in with the adults. This created more issues and trauma within the person, and therapy was not as normalized, so they “just had to deal with it.” Generational trauma would occur with mental illness, and the process starts all over again in a different decade. The breakout of Troubled Teen Programs also started in this decade. 

2000’s

After talking to a person who was involved in the troubled teen industry during the 2000s, I discovered that most therapists’ approaches in the 2000s were more psychoanalyzing and trying to get to the root cause of the problem. This problem-solving way to go about healing has been popular throughout the decades, and it’s still very much alive currently. Wilderness programs became more popular- this was, by far, one of the messiest things about the troubled teen industry. Teens ran out into the woods to try to break out of this cycle of abuse that happens with wilderness programs. In simple terms, many parents would sign away their child’s rights to these programs, and they could do whatever they wanted. Unfortunately, this led to abuse, starvation, and years of trauma for these people who were victims of these programs. 

2010’s 

Breaking code silence - this is one of the resources that survivors of the troubled teen industry use to speak out about it. Arguably the most famous person that has spoken about breaking code silence is Paris Hilton. The Troubled Teen Industry really rose to the height of its “popularity” in the 2000s and the 2010s. The movement of “Breaking Code Silence” started in 2013, without Paris Hilton. Several wilderness programs and boarding schools were advertised to help parents with their “problem children”. These programs would severely abuse and manipulate these teens into silence. This industry was designed to break mentally ill teenagers and force them into obedience.

While it may seem like the mental health crisis is vastly different in different time periods, they all have things in common- the abuse and manipulation of mentally ill people. With the pandemic, this crisis has only gotten worse. Will future generations have to uphold this cycle of hurt?

By Caroline Lackey