Exposing the Behavioral Health and Addiction Treatment Industry for Troubled Teens

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Behind the glossy brochures and promises of healing lies a multi billion dollar industry quietly profiting from vulnerable children. The Troubled Teen Industry this week we sit down with Dr. Corey Gentry, a troubled teen industry survivor who leveraged his experience to earn a PhD in Political Science where he studied power structures and systematic violence. In this raw and essential conversation, Dr. Gentry shares his journey, exposes the red flags every parent and grandparent must know, and reveals how systematic failures allow abuse to flourish. He delivers a powerful mix of emotional storytelling and evidence based analysis, giving listeners the tools to spot warning signs, advocate for ethical care and join the fight for reform.

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Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing through Adversity. In this podcast we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experience, experiences are valued and your journey is honored.

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Today we are diving into one of the most hidden and urgent issues affecting youth and vulnerable families the troubled teen industry. What makes this conversation so powerful is our guests unique perspective. Dr.

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Corey Gentry isn't just a scholar on systematic violence.

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He's a survivor of a program that promised help but delivered manipulation and trauma. His memoir, Selling Sanity, exposes how programs marketed as healing often cause lasting harm, especially for vulnerable kinship youth. We need this conversation to empower our audience to protect their their own.

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Dr. Gentry, thank you for your courage and for being with us today. Your memoir and expertise, from surviving the troubled teenage industry as a teenager to earning your PhD in Political Science gives you a rare and essential voice on this topic.

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Corey, to begin with, can you share what led to your being placed in one of those teen treatment programs? What was the expectation from you versus the reality that you experienced inside?

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Thanks and great question. First and foremost, it's important for me to highlight that I was definitely a troubled teen. I had a lot of emotional and behavioral problems, a lot of which were born out of things that were completely out of my, like a lot of kids, things that were just completely out of My control. I came from this very economically and socially disenfranchised family. My mother was very, very mentally ill and had a lot of problems, and my father was just ill equipped to deal with. With those things. And that's not his fault or anyone else's. It just simply is a statement of fact.

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So what initially led me to be placed in one of these troubled teen programs particularly, and I. I like to make distinctions between the different types, because there are troubled teen programs and then there are troubled teen programs, and there are good ones and there are these other ones.

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I unfortunately had an experience of going to one of the other ones initially because of my family's socioeconomic situation. A lot of stuff that was going on externally and internally at home really caused a lot of problems for me. So I started to, at a very young age, experiment with a variety of different substances. A lot of it was just that it was a teenager experimenting with substances. And kind of the area that I grew up in, I was in a very rurally poor area outside of a somewhat urban place in Georgia, just outside of Augusta. And, you know, there just wasn't a whole hell of a lot for anybody to do out that way. You know, you're out in the middle of the woods and we lived in these trailer parks, and I think the closest thing for entertainment for us was the military base that was a couple miles down the road from us. So there wasn't a whole heck of a lot happening in that area. So we just kind of did what everybody else did, which was smoke weed or get alcohol from whatever person we could manipulate into buying it for us or stealing it from. And that was kind of my initial experimentation with drugs and alcohol. And because I was a troubled kid and I did have a lot of emotional and behavioral issues, the addition of any kind of substances on that just immediately freaked my parents out. They didn't know what they didn't know. And a friend of mine at the time had gotten involved in one of these trouble teen programs. And he was one of these kids that just. He was sort of the resident screw up of our friend group. He always got in trouble if something happened.

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His name was Kenneth. He was going to get caught. So if he was speaking out, he was going to get caught. If we were drinking and driving, Kenneth was going to get caught. And he, of course, ended up getting caught and ended up in one of these programs. I just sort of rolled in very naively because he said, oh, you should come with me. And looking back on it, it's kind of A recruitment strategy that a lot of these programs use is they'll get individuals that are in the program and they'll use them.

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They call them alumni relations is a lot of what it is. So Kenneth was involved and he kind of spread the word and got me to come.

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And the counselor sat me down and basically just told me how screwed up my life was and how my life was falling, which there was nothing to argue against with these guys. But they were creative and they were good, good at attaching all of the external circumstances of my life to this, these substances that I was using, all of which was very recreational at that point in time. Of course, I was a teenager, and I don't know any teenagers that don't go into that stuff.

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A little unhinged. We just don't have moderation tendencies at that point. I was 13 years old at the time. I don't know.

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13 year old. That's really good at moderating and engaging in self constraint on a lot of different things. So by the time I was 15 and going to this program, I'd gotten in trouble here and there with a few things looking back on it, stuff that every. Everybody in one way or another kind of gets involved in. But because of the extraneous circumstances in my life, they were just like, oh, well, you're a drug addict and an alcoholic. And I remember them saying, you are so sick.

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I'd never had somebody tell me that before. And I remember my mother growing up at the time because she had some significant mental illnesses. She would try and kill herself or she would end up in this place or that place or whatever. And the excuse was always like, oh, your mother's just very sick, your mother's very sick. So on some kind of subconscious level, I knew what that meant. And I knew that there were very negative connotations underpinning that statement. So when they said that to me, I was like, oh, my God, I'm sick. But it really kind of hit me. And then they just started pointing to a lot of the extraneous circumstances. And looking back on it, I had nothing to do with the fact that the fact that my mother was mentally ill. I had nothing to do with the fact that my parents were in the economic situation that they were in. I had nothing to do with any of the circumstances that I was. I was born into, but they really led me to believe that I did and that I had chosen a lot of this and that it was, for lack of better word, it was my fault what was going on. And that if I could just listen to them and adhere to this program or this really kind of structured way of living that they had, which involved fully handing myself over to this program. That they were like, all of your problems will change. And they would talk about it in kind of very spiritual and kind of a new age pop psychology version of it.

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It was like, you'll awaken. It was in a lot of ways very similar to what a lot of religions talk about when they talk about finding Christ or when the Buddhists talk about becoming enlightened. So when I initially came into the program, I was 15 years old. Again, I come from a really messed up background in this really poor family.

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And here I was in this really affluent part of town with a lot of these other kids that were very affluent because that tended to be, that tends to be the audience of a lot of these programs or upper middle class, economically well off families.

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And then there was me. And Kenneth certainly was one of my friends, but his family definitely fit that mold. I, I came there with them. And you have to understand at this point people would not hang out with me because of who my family was and where we lived. I remember because I was a hormonal 15 year old boy. There were these beautiful young women that just came up and immediately hugged me and were like, I love you and we want to hang out with you. And these were people that quite literally at my school wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire walking by me. And all of a sudden I was the center of attention and it was just very seductive. Very seductive is the only way I can explain it. And it was, I think, something that encapsulates and also just completely explains my entire experience. There was the kind of seductive nature of that because it was a lot of love and a lot of immediate we want to hang out with you. You were just completely engulfed in it.

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But then it was quickly shifted, shown that there were major conditions on this and that if you swayed away from any of those conditions, that there were consequences. And the major consequence was going to be withholding of that love and that affection.

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So if you wanted to hang out with these beautiful people and be around these kids and do all of these fun things and be a part of this world, which for a 15 year old who would not want this, it was extremely attractive and they would allow you to smoke and they got you to get dropped out of school because they were like, school's part of the problem. You just need to like hang out with us. So there were just a ton of things that were very attractive for a teenager during this time. What would you say was one of the most emotionally abusive experiences that you had?

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Well, like a lot of troubled teens and folks that were like me, that came from messed up families, or even folks that do have substance use issues. It's never a linear line. So it's never just a straight line in terms of how people progress in the behavioral health world.

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Progress is very messy. So a lot of it is like five steps forward, 25 steps backwards, and then you take 10 steps forward and then 15 steps backwards, and eventually you're taking more steps forward than you are backwards. But things like relapse or behavioral outbursts, they're all to be expected. And I certainly had some of those.

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And relapse is just kind of a part of it. There's still a lot of shame that a lot of the 12 step programs emanate around that because it is an abstinence only model. But there it was really taken to the next level. So they didn't even call it a relapse. And I did have a few relapses, but they would call it things like, you bailed on us. So it wasn't like, oh, you have this disease, which addiction is recognized as a mental illness, a disease, and part of that disease is there are going to be flare ups and problems and we just deal with that as it comes. It wasn't that way at all. They would really utilize the love of the group and the people in the group as a mechanism for shame. So when I relapsed, for instance, they all looked at me and said, you bailed on us. Which was very shameful in and of itself.

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And then I was excommunicated from the group. So they wouldn't talk to me, they wouldn't return my calls. It was a complete cold shoulder. Until you recommitted and readmitted to their treatment program, which every time you did that, it costs money.

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So they kind of blackmailed you. Oh, they, they totally would. And for a teenager like myself, it was horrible because these people were my life. And as a kid, you care deeply. Well, it twists your sense of reality and you're trying to build up a new sense of self esteem at the time and trust. And trust. They really sell you on this idea that you are just screwed.

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And I really bought into that. So it was like your thinking screwed, your decision making is screwed. You can't trust yourself, you can only trust us. And you inevitably make a mistake or screw up, which you know, I did and countless other kids did. There was a very big emotional price that you had to pay being ostracized from those people. I was in treatment and knew plenty of folks that their kids went off to kill themselves after stuff like that happened because their parents didn't want them to come back to the group, or they didn't have the money to put them in the group, or they saw what they were doing and didn't like it, so they spoke out against them. It. And as a member of the group or someone that was in there, you weren't allowed to talk, to have anything to do with anything unless the counselors in that program gave you the green light. So it was extremely emotional damaging. And it resulted in a lot of crying and me begging my parents to do whatever to get going. And then on their end, they would work on the families and be like, well, your kid's gonna die unless we help them and this and that. And you can imagine how that goes with a family that's very desperate now. They're very calm and polished and tempered in their delivery with it to the family members, and they knew what they were doing.

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But from my side, I saw it like, oh, my God, this thing that I'm completely relying upon that they told me I can't live without, they're going to take it away from me. It makes you very desperate. It's like, I'll do whatever you tell me to. Just please let me see my friends again. So did you see the disparity of it at that time when you were in the program?

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Oh, yeah. It was very clear that an overall confused. It fed into a lot of existing narratives that I already had about growing up poor. You know, particularly in this country, a lot of times, people's economic situation is tied to a lot of morality. So if you're poor or you're broke, it's because you're somewhat deficient, or you're stupid, or you made bad decisions, or there's an element of shame just in and of that goes around it. And it was pretty clear that I wasn't a part of that world. And it was pretty clear that the kids that I was in that treatment center with were very wealthy. I mean, I remember the first time going to one of their homes and just thinking, this living room is bigger than my entire trailer, and thinking, like, the clothes that his mother's wearing are probably worth more than my entire family's net worth combined.

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I did notice even then that the folks that the counselors and the treatment center owners were really cottoning up to. They weren't my family. I mean, they wanted me there, there. And however my family paid for it, at the end of the day, they wanted that money. But it was very clear that the kids that came from really affluent families, who their parents were doctors or lawyers or prominent individuals, that they really got a lot of the focus and the attention because the counselors, they had kind of different tiers of the program that you could go into. And there was kind of the top tier that was the most expensive, which was this program out in Arizona. And I think at the time that was like 15 or $16,000 a month, which that was quite expensive back then. Looking on it now, it was a drop in the bucket compared to what programs charge now. But at the time that was a lot of money. So you could definitely see the disparities. And it was clear that all of the counselors and the people that were staff members of the group, they all came from very prominent families. You would just hear it in conversation. They would talk about like their fathers or this or that, or you could see it in, you could tell that it was that their audience or their target were upper middle class people. But again, for someone that came from an area like mine, that made it even more attractive because it, there was an element within it. If you join us and you become a part of us, then this kind of lifestyle too will be afforded comes with it. Yeah, it was an element of social mobility that really came. It's like, yeah, we, you talk about it being a multi billion dollar industry and obviously money plays a role, from what you're telling us, in how the kids are treated or mistreated in the programs. Did you see actual signs that profit motives were prioritized over actual care all the time? I mean, looking back on it now, hindsight's always 20 20. And I have a unique perspective in that I am someone that went through one of these treatment centers and then I got my education and then I ended up going back to work in the treatment industry sort of by accident. I was able to see things many years later from a different lens. But even during that time I was in treatment with a few folks that their parents had spent and they would kind of laugh about it and we would joke about it. Their parents had spent millions of dollars on treatment for them. I was in treatment with this one kid whose family were these very, very wealthy restaurateurs that own these very well known national restaurant chains and stuff. And they were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And they had Spent millions on their kid by the time he got there. And it was no surprise to anyone that this individual and his family were like very popular with the counselors and the treatment owners and stuff.

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Because there's a marketing angle to that. They like focusing in on those individuals. If you're a celebrity or a movie star, I mean, they're like wolves on a wounded chicken or something. They smell money on people for sure.

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And at the time that was very confusing for me because I really wanted to be part of the counseling group and I was really drinking the Kool Aid at that time. So it was a little disheartening. A lot of it was just be the best version of you that you can be and try really hard and do this and do everything that we tell you to and life will be wonderful.

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And I was one of those people that did that. I mean, I. I really tried to just neurotically do everything that they told me to and unfortunately my life didn't get any better. In fact, it stayed the same or it kept getting a lot worse. So it was very confusing for somebody like me and very frustrating for them because. Yes. What a mixed message. Yeah. When they're send to a child when. Their solution didn't work and you know, I would ask about this, they would get quite frustrated with me. So that could be very confusing. Some people don't like people that ask questions. Yeah, I learned that a lot too. So let's talk about what some of the red flags are for a grandparent the grandparents should look for when they're being pressured to send a grandchild to one of these programs.

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That's a great, great question. And the first thing I would say is that the first red flag is if you're getting any pressure from the program at all.

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I mean, aside from. I can't think of many components of medicine where they really try to scare and force you into a form of treatment. I know a lot of doctors and a lot of physicians that will present very compelling evidence and say, hey, look, we've got these scans and we've got this evidence, and based on this and this and this and this, you have stage four cancer. Therefore, we really recommend that you do an aggressive surgery and chemotherapy and this and that in the treatment space. It's. First of all, it's not that clear cut ever. And they don't have any of those kinds of hard data points to go to.

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So if there's any kind of pressure on, like you have to do this, you have to do this right now or there's going to be some kind of dire consequence. For me, that is a major red flag. Just. It's a major red flag. There are always. There's always time and there should always be some period of reflection and for lack of better words, cooler minds prevailing in terms of placement and what to do.

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Yes, of course there are certain. There are always like extraneous circumstances that are very difficult. Like if somebody's just OD'd and they're in the ICU and plugged up to a bunch of machines and they're getting out and the doctor's like, look, you know, if this person drinks again, they're probably gonna die. But typically, even in those circumstances, hospitals will hold on to an individual until there is a recommended treatment option.

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They're required to do so, and you can advocate for them to do so.

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So if an individual is in a hospital situation, they're in the safest space that they can be in at that point. So looking into a long term residential solution for your child or loved one. First of all, this is a controversial opinion, but this is my opinion. After years of working in the industry and experiencing this, the actual dire need for residential treatment for somebody is very rare. Most stuff can be taken care of on outpatient basis with really good therapy, with like good therapists and good mental health providers like psychiatrists. And a lot of programs do really great work on outpatient basis. Meaning that like you just send your kids somewhere for. It's almost like day school. They go there. Well, I think a lot of parents and grandparents put children in treatment programs because they're desperate, they don't know what to do and they can't handle them and they want them to be in a safe place. Would you say so? Yeah, exactly. And there are families, and I do come across those situations often where. And usually that's just a very honest conversation that the parents need to have with a provider. But then again, it's good to know that you're having this conversation with an ethical provider. Because there are conversations that I've had where the parents are like, look, I need space between me and my kid for a little while. You know, there's a lot of history here. There's some anger, there's some aggression. Maybe resources are getting taken away, or sometimes families are legitimately scared.

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I totally understand that. I understand the need for sometimes taking prompt action, and that is 100% necessary.

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What I would say to families that are talking to these programs when they're having those discussions is a few things.

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One, who Are you talking to. Are you talking to a licensed clinician when you're having these discussions? Because a lot of these programs have what's called admission staff. And admission staff are salespeople. I don't care how they frame it or whatever. If you are on the phone with an admissions person and that person is not a licensed clinician, it is a salesperson. You are speaking to a salesperson, and their job, good, bad, or indifferent, is to close that sale. So you, as a grandparent or a parent or a family member, have a right to be like, no, I want to speak to the actual human beings that are going to be providing the actual care to my children.

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And if you get a good point, if you get pushback against that in any way, shape or form, like, oh, they're really busy, or, oh, whatever, they'll come up with a million different things, then I would advocate heavily that you do not or refuse to make a decision until they do speak to that clinician. And then when speaking to that clinician, I always ask, are they licensed?

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If they're licensed, when are they licensed? What is their license number? Look it up. All of this is public information.

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And then ask them where they did their licensing credentials at, meaning where did they collect their hours, who their supervisor was? It sounds a little ridiculous, but I always tell families to put on your detective hat when looking at these things and look into these treatment centers the way you would a college for your kid. You know, families really do homework on where their kids go to school and all of that.

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Do the same amount of research on these programs because they are going to have a much bigger impact on your kid's life than any school or university ever will?

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True. Very true. What would you say to somebody who believes that the programs are necessary to straighten a kid out, or that the strict kind of coercive environment is just tough love?

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I would argue that there is no such thing as tough love.

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There's just. There is only love, and then that is it. Most of the tough love modifiers and things that people tend to add are just. In my experience, as someone that has heard the tough love phrase many times throughout his life, it is typically a nice, civilized way of covering up emotional or emotional, mental or physical abuse to somebody.

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So there are most definitely very troubled kids. And kids with major behavioral issues and aggression problems and stuff like that do need to be in safe, contained psychiatric environments. The psychological impact of a lot of these behavior modification programs and the problem that I have with a lot of them is that they're not based in any kind of fundamental science. So it would be one thing if there was a lot of evidence that proved that this worked.

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But when I talk about troubled teen programs, I talk a lot, mostly about therapeutic boarding schools. Wilderness programs are big red flags. A lot of these, like long term psychiatric sort of supportive living environments where they'll send kids to for long, extended periods of time. There's no. What are the statistics.

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Yeah, Citizen statistics for the difference between programs like those and the one that you.

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The ones that you have greater faith in. Yeah. So for instance, like, a great example of this is a lot of this, and this would be another red flag for families is look at their outcome measures, ask them to see their data, and ask them to see it in their entirety, because they're very creative at turning advertising into empirical fact, and it's just not true.

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For instance, a lot of these programs, wilderness programs or therapeutic boarding schools, or some of these more restrictive behavior modification treatment programs, particularly places in countries with. Or not countries, states with, like, low regulations.

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A lot of places like Utah, Wyoming, programs that are areas that are famous for these abusive programs. Texas is another place. They will come up with stats that say we have a 75% or an 80% success rate or whatever. And, well, if you really dig into their numbers and you look at the people that they kick out because they can't keep in there for whatever reason, and then you look at the people that leave, so their parents are like, this place is crazy. We're taking our kid out of here. It's just not effective. Or people that commit suicide, they cherry pick a lot of data so they'll be like, oh, of all the people that complete our program, these people go on to have whatever, and they'll give some like 85 or 75% statistic. But once you really start digging in, it's really like a 10% success rate. Well, it's my understanding that a lot of kids don't complete these programs. Oh, 100%. That's what I'm saying. That's kind of the same across the board, isn't it? Some of it depends. I mean, that's not related to the success of the program, is it? Say a lot of it is related to the success of the program, because a lot of it is, you know, either from the patient or the family's perspective, based on the efficacy. So is this. Is this working for me or not? You're making my kid whittle a spoon. He has psychiatric problems. How is whittling a spoon gonna help? Him with this. So they'll pull their kids out or, you know, kids get in trouble, they hurt themselves, the facility finds out we actually can't take care of this person at all. So then they kick him out or they'll AMA them. So the overall success rate and completion rates on these programs are relatively low to begin with because the kids either they burn out or go nuts because of the abuse that takes place inside there. They get there and they just can't take the physical constraints that are going on. Or they get in there and the pro, the providers realize this person is really mentally ill or they have behavior problems. We can't contain this in the environment that we have. So it's very unsafe. So you look at the stats, and the stats are pretty abysmal in that respect. As a political scientist, you approach this through the lens of power structures and systematic violence. Can you explain how this industry remains so under regulated and opaque despite mounting evidence of abuse?

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That is a really great question and something that puzzles me as well as all of the policymakers and regulators that I'm constantly in contact with bringing these things to their attention.

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Part of it is because despite a lot of the public outcry and everything that people are saying these days, mental health and mental health issues still remain one of those things that people just, they'd rather not deal with.

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But then when it comes time to do something about it, it becomes very difficult because good behavioral health is. It's expensive, it takes a lot of planning, it takes a lot of money, it takes a fair bit of time. It's not a, again, it's not a linear, straightforward process like open heart surgery or something like that, where, you know they're going to be in for a certain period of time, you know, what the recovery time is going to be, what medications they need to be on and what basic things they do. Which we do have some fundamental understanding of that in the behavioral health space, particularly with like adolescence and in developmental psychology. The problem is that you're dealing with a human variable where unlike open heart surgery, there's a pretty high chance that they're going to do what you tell them to do after that surgery is complete and that they'll take the medications, they'll do this and that they'll get on whatever blood thinners you want them to be on, they'll start exercising, they'll do a diet.

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Behavioral health, it's not quite that straightforward. We know what the basics of good mental health and good behavioral health hygiene are in maintenance. It's just Getting people to take that seriously can be the challenging part. And unfortunately, I don't think the industry has done the profession any favors because with the kind of industrialization of treatment and the way that it's been mass marketed and a lot of these programs are quite frankly run by just idiots. I don't know a better way of saying it. You have these people that have no business doing half of the stuff that they're doing running these companies. And it really shoots the profession in the foot because people don't want to take it seriously. And it's unfortunate because there are people in the profession of mental health that are doing amazing work, amazing work, and therapists and therapeutic modalities. And there have been great breakthroughs in medication and technology that has really moved the needle very far on the behavioral health side. But unfortunately, the industry as a whole is still pretty hijacked by a lot of these sycophants is what I call them.

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It's overwhelmingly held hostage by the 12 step kind of doctrine and ideology, which is great, but it's not evidence based whatsoever. There's a lot of religious fundamentalism and a lot of doctrine that really resembles a lot of what radicals do in conflict zones when they are recruiting and radicalizing. And it tends to attract fringe personalities which are a lot of these kind of charismatic, almost cult like figures. And that theme is pretty consistent across most of the programs. There's usually some charismatic figurehead that's based in some kind of pseudo science or whatever. And they'll be talking nonsense mostly, but it'll have sprinkles of like psychology or religion or this or that in there. And it's. It's almost like this build a bear version of science that they are pseudoscience that they try to come up with. And then they package it up, put some nice bells and whistles on it, a bow here or there, and then they build the facility in a really aesthetically pleasing location. And everybody's like, oh, this looks good, it sounds good, it must be good.

00:33:37.789 --> 00:34:38.940
Well, and unfortunately the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak. For people that are actually doing some good things, whether they're secular or religious, what's your perspective on what we can do in this country to do a better job of bringing quality mental health to the masses? I speak from the perspective as a grandparent raising grandkids who does not get any financial support for helping these children that have gone through trauma get the proper mental health care that they need. Yeah, that's the big problem. And there's a bit of a misnomer in the behavioral health world in general that I think the industry has really capitalized off of is that there needs to be some new and innovative model that has to be invented because these terrible public systems that we have just don't.

00:34:39.420 --> 00:35:27.969
Aren't operating. And in my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Hands down, the best programs and the best facilities, bar none in the country are state operated and run. If you look at facilities like for instance, the VA is a great example of it. The VA does God's work. I mean, I don't know a better way of saying it, but for veterans and their families, we should be funding the VA 10 times more than we're currently funding it because they do God's work there. I mean, they really, they work with the sickest of the sick and they train and produce the best clinicians on planet Earth in the behavioral health space, hands down. So the structures and the programs and the providers are out there.

00:35:28.369 --> 00:35:44.059
And we already have the models like community mental health models that are funded by things like Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health or the Montana State Board of Mental. There are programs that are funded through these, through these bodies and they're brilliant and they do brilliant work.

00:35:44.059 --> 00:35:54.820
They just don't have enough of them and there's not enough funding in there. So there's this misnomer, particularly in the United States, that if the private sector is doing it, it has to be 10 times better.

00:35:55.059 --> 00:36:13.780
There are a lot of community based mental health organizations that have been around places like Los Angeles and all the major cities and states and forever. They've been around for years and years and years and years and they do excellent, excellent work and they have great outcomes. They just aren't funded. There needs to be a mind shift.

00:36:14.179 --> 00:36:45.360
There are some things that the state should not do because they're just horrible at it, you know, but there are some things that like the public sector does actually really well. And we should just fund that and let them do that really well. I think public community mental health is definitely one of those things through organizations like Department of Health Human Services or Department of Veterans affairs because the infrastructure is already there, the clinicians and the training, the expertise is already there.

00:36:45.679 --> 00:37:11.090
It's just something that we don't use and we don't pay a lot of attention to because it's, you know, it's not very sexy. It's like real mental health care and behavioral health care. Everybody likes these kind of breakthrough moments where Johnny or little Sam starts crying. And he's like, I just had this life altering. And yeah, those are great. But the reality is that those typically aren't sustainable experiences. They're definitely outliers.

00:37:11.090 --> 00:37:14.849
You know, real behavioral healthcare. It's kind of like brushing your teeth or hygiene.

00:37:14.849 --> 00:39:14.599
It's one of these things where you're like, why am I doing this again? So you don't necessarily see the benefits of doing it, but you definitely see the repercussions of not doing it. And I think that's what we've really run into in this country is that we've uninvested so much in that stuff and we've left it to the private sector markets to come in and take over that. You know, unfortunately, they tend to go for the sexy headlines. So that's where you get a lot of this ridiculous, oh, we're going to try this wild, unconventional method. And the reality of behavioral health care is like, it's pretty boring. You know, it's supposed to be a one step at a time kind of. It's. I know I'm doing a really bad job of articulating. No, no, I think that's a perfect way of putting it. It's boring. And sometimes people have to get used. To that because it's book by a gentleman named Jack Kornfield, who wrote quite extensively on like Zen Buddhism. And he had a really great line in the book. The title of it's a great book. It's called after the Ecstasy of the Laundry. And the premise of the book is everybody, including myself or whatever, people get really hung up on these kind of earth shattering experiences. So these kind of on the road, road to Damascus moments where you like see God and there's a big white light. And that's not to take away from those moments. There's a lot of impact that those can have. But even with those moments after that, you still got to do the laundry, you know, and really the laundry and the kind of day in, day out stuff is where most people struggle the most. And that's really where in behavioral health, that's where the work is. Thank you for that perspective, Corey. Your time in the program could have led to a downward spiral in your life, and yet you chose a path of advocacy. How did your time in the program impact your mental health long term? And how did you finally graduate from that trauma into your current purpose.

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Again? Another great question. And if I'm being 100% transparent, I mean, I haven't and I don't think I ever will fully get over the trauma and the abuse that I experienced there. I'd love to say that I'm this resurrected human being or whatever, but, I mean, there are some wounds that time does not heal, you know, so you just kind of have to learn to live with it. For me, my experience has been that living with it has really fed into a lot of the advocacy, because having gone through it and then when I started working in the treatment industry, I came into it accidentally, really. I never wanted to get involved in it. I was very naive. Coming back into it, I thought, oh, well, my experience was just a unique experience. When I did see that my experience was not unique and that it was more than just how it had been presented to me by practitioners and a lot of people in the industry that, like, oh, everybody would admit, like, man, what you went through was crazy, you know, And I'd encourage anyone to read my book to really understand the depth of that, but they would all kind of say, this is unique. This isn't my experience. This doesn't happen. You know, it's like, there's a few bad apples in every bushel kind of thing. But the more that I got involved in the industry, I was like, no, this is not unique. This is, like, going on.

00:40:39.579 --> 00:40:46.860
This is endemic. It's systemic, and people are getting harmed, and people are getting away with this, and it's not okay.

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We mentioned earlier when we were speaking, it's an opportunity for you to give purpose to the payment you have gone through. So why did you write Selling Sanity Now? What is your ultimate goal for that book? And what change do you hope to spark into policy and public awareness through the book? I finally decided to write the book about a year ago.

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I had worked in the industry for a few years. I was meeting a lot of these ED consultants and a lot of people from my past, people that recommended and put me into treatment. Initially was trying to see things from a different lens, because that part of my life, I mean, it was extremely traumatic, and I spent years suicidal after coming out of that treatment program. But through God's grace or what have you, I did not. And. And then seeing it from the other side, I wanted to understand that period of my life. But after working in the industry and then seeing that my experience was not like an isolated incident, and I saw the way that survivors were being talked about within the industry.

00:41:49.820 --> 00:42:37.840
I had witnessed some really underhanded stuff in the industry, and I tried to whistleblow on a few programs, and I got blackballed by programs and individuals in the industry. I mean, the Legal threats that I got were pretty significant. So I was like, okay, nobody wants to talk about what's going on here. So that motivated me even more because their self righteous indignation is still probably one of my biggest character flaws, but it's also a major motivator for me. I thought, I'm not going to give this up. And then I wanted to write my story for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to give a male perspective. There are a lot of survivor perspectives and survivor stories out there. And from my experience and what I've witnessed, almost all of them, in fact, are women. They're women survivor stories. They're survivor stories.

00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:45.590
Interesting. And I know a lot of men that have really, really struggled very, very roughly. Why do you think that is?

00:42:45.989 --> 00:42:49.829
I think there's the male stereotypes. Men don't shame.

00:42:49.829 --> 00:43:27.699
I don't think this was the intended impact, and I think the movement was very important. But I think one of the unfortunate byproducts of the MeToo movement, a lot of the stuff that happened kind of in and around that were a lot of male survivor stories, because there are a lot of men that have experienced tons of. I've experienced sexual abuse and sexual trauma and harassment and from other men and a variety of different things. And I think part of that, again, an occupational hazard of what happened is a lot of those stories got pushed to the side. I think a lot of that fed into this kind of greater narrative of like, well, men are part of the problem.

00:43:28.340 --> 00:44:05.280
Men are the abusers. They're not the ones that get abused. And in my experience, I was mostly abused by women in these treatment centers, and I was a male. I thought it was very important to give that perspective and also give a voice to male survivors. Look, we suffer, too, and you don't have to suffer in silence. And there's nothing. There's nothing wrong, and there's nothing shameful about speaking up and speaking out about things that happen to you that you had nothing to do with. So I wanted to give that perspective. But I also didn't want my survivor story just to be another kind of generic survivor story. Not that there's anything wrong with those.

00:44:05.280 --> 00:44:12.099
Everybody's experience is important, and I cannot emphasize that enough. Whatever your story is, you should tell it.

00:44:12.579 --> 00:44:15.860
But I wanted to attach my story to a bigger narrative.

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And that was the kind of meta narrative of what's happening in the troubled teen industry and the mental health industry as a whole and uncover and shed some light on really what's happening. Because I think more and more families need to be aware of this because there, there is a need for behavioral health care and behavioral health care services. I 100% agree and support that. Mental health and mental health care services is so important, but it's also very important that we know what we're getting into with these relationships because they are looking after the most vulnerable human beings in our society, mentally ill or troubled children. I can't think of a more vulnerable population than those. I agree. So these individuals that are looking after them, first of all, they should be held to a higher standard than other individuals and they should be monitored a hell of a lot more than they're being monitored right now because the approach that we currently have is it's tough job. So just do the best you can. Good luck. And I think we should and should demand better of our providers in that. I agree. And your journey from survivor to scholar is a powerful testament about turning that pain into a great call for justice that you're serving others. By publishing your book and your story, you've given them not just a story, but vital tools to protect the vulnerable youth that are in our care and in the care of these professionals. Thank you for this conversation, Corey. I really enjoyed it. Where can our listeners find your book? Sure. So Selling Sanity, the Troubled Teen Industry, the Insane Profits and the Kids who Pay the Price is available on Amazon. You can also find me on my website, which is Corey Gentry.com which I know you'll put up for all your guests and everything. And I can be reached there via my email which is just Corey Gentry. Corey Gentry.com and I'm also very active on X and LinkedIn. That's great. Yes, I will put the links in the show notes. Corey oh great.

00:46:35.849 --> 00:46:38.889
Well, thank you so much again for having me and this was really a treat.

00:46:38.889 --> 00:46:42.489
I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I learned a lot. Thank you.

00:46:42.730 --> 00:46:46.530
Thank you. Dr.

00:46:46.530 --> 00:47:04.699
Gentry's work reminds us that awareness is the first step toward protection. This week we challenge you to share one specific red flag from this conversation with a friend, friend, educator or mental health professional. By making this hidden issue visible, you become part of the solution.

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Share what you learned in our online community as well to learn more about the troubled teen industry, get the tools for ethical care and support Dr. Gentry's advocacy. Pick up his memoir and expose Selling Sanity, the Troubled Teen Industry, the Insane Profits, and the Kids who Pay the Price.

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You can find links and resources in our show notes. Please subscribe and leave a review to help bring this important conversation to more caregivers. A 2023 study found that almost half of parents regularly feel completely overwhelmed with stress.

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But what if resilience wasn't just a trait you're born with but a skill you could build? Next week we speak with clinical psychologist Dr. Kate Lund, author of the new book Step Away. Dr. Lund breaks down why parenting is more challenging than ever and introduces her powerful evidence based approach to resilient parenting. She shares strategies rooted in CBT and ACT that teach your mind to bend, not break under pressure, allowing you to move from perfectionism into presence and ultimately model unbreakable resilience for your children.

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I'll look forward to you joining us next week. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you. And I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.