The first thing I wanted to get out of the way when discussing treatment, is the question of Adderall. I'm of the opinion that you don't just "go off" Adderall. If your child has grown up taking Adderall, the first thing you need to do in situations regarding impaired functioning is but him or her back on it. In my situation, this would have saved my parents a whole bunch of money because it was because I was off Adderall that they thought I was doing poorly. Not showering, not doing anything worthwhile with my time. A pill of Adderall and a little nudge back in the direction of school and I would have been back on my feet (we would have skipped the Geodon step).
What about situations where parents are having trouble with their kids, and they actually may need treatment? Well, I've heard good things about Wilderness. Every single person I talked to at Innercept about wilderness said it was helpful.
Of course, for the more indoor personality types, throwing your child out in the middle of nature is a step in the wrong direction. I personally would not have wanted to go to wilderness.
For super duper low functioning kids, a place in the ballpark of Innercept but not Innercept might be ideal. Kids with eating disorders benefitted from Innercept, I know that that should have been Innercept's specialty. Speaking from an honest perspective, the best thing about Innercept is the way they feed you. When I was there, I ate enough to lose weight without feeling like I was constantly hungry. They portion out the meals, using proper portion sizes. My only complaint is that there were a couple meals that could use improvement. For example, we could have had spaghetti with meat sauce instead of just noodles and tomato sauce. Also, there was this awful meal called mushroom stroganoff which was canned mushroom soup mixed with sliced mushrooms over a biscuit. For the price of the facility, they could have invested in a little bit higher quality fare. As in, more protein. Whenever I go to the hospital I have this same problem, but it was worse at Innercept. However, they are very willing to accommodate for individual protein needs, so you could probably request higher protein levels if you are on a work out regimen.
The thing I wanted to point out is, the value in a treatment center, in patient, apparently, is it keeps your kids from partying. Now, I'm not talking about young adults with drug issues, because that's a whole different boat. I'm talking about mental illness. It's my opinion that parents and treatment professionals always think you can't handle drugs when you can.
Like in my case. My parents look for a cause of my acting out. They turn to the energy drinks, the alcohol, the marijuana. I can handle all these things, and I speak the truth. I've actually not relapsed like my parents thought I did this year or last year. I was acting out in an attempt to be sent to the hospital, because there was something I was going to do at the hospital that I didn't end up doing. All three times that was the reason. It wasn't the drugs.
I've met patients who say they can handle caffeine and mean they can handle caffeine, but the adults around them say they can't. I trust the patients.
Anyway, where was I going with this? There's no reason to send your kid to a treatment center if their diagnosis is Asperger's. Eating disorders are helped by treatment centers like Innercept, both compulsive overeating and anorexia or bulimia (I kind of secretly appreciated the fact that they lock the refrigerators at Innercept, because I got so bored there I might have resorted to eating out of boredom). Bipolar disorder is not helped by treatment centers like Innercept. I personally did not get any mental illness education at Innercept, not that it would have mattered. Down the list of symptoms: Don't have it, don't have it, don't have it. Can't relate, can't relate, can't relate.
You know, I'm writing this, and I actually don't consider myself qualified to answer this question of what you do with troubled kids. I know that most of my friends at Innercept were too high functioning to be helped by that place.
