Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions people ask us most. The answers are short. Each one links to the pages on this site where we go deeper, and to the records behind them.

If you or a young person you know is in danger in a program right now, go to Report Abuse for the agencies to call in your state.

What is the troubled teen industry?

The troubled teen industry (TTI) is a network of programs that take young people away from home to change their behavior, and the businesses that fill those programs. It includes wilderness programs, therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, boot camps, religious reform schools, group homes, and many juvenile justice facilities. Around them are the educational consultants who refer families, the transport companies that take kids from their beds at night, the trade associations that vouch for programs, and the investors who own them.

These programs sell themselves to families in crisis as the answer to a struggling child. Behind the marketing, many rely on isolation, restraint, humiliation, forced labor and peer punishment. Children have died in them. Our Overview and our list of young people who have died in residential treatment say more.

How we decide what counts

A program is part of the troubled teen industry for our purposes when all four of these are true:

  • It is involuntary. The young person did not choose to go and cannot leave on their own. A parent's signature, a court order or an agency placement does not make it voluntary for the child.
  • It is residential, for 30 days or longer. Young people live there, and the program is meant to keep them at least a month.
  • It at least claims to treat behavioral or psychological problems, whether it calls that treatment therapy, recovery, rehabilitation, discipline or religious counseling. Many programs claim far more treatment than they give.
  • It removes young people from their home communities: their families, schools, friends and the people who would notice something was wrong.

What a program calls itself does not decide it. A "school", a "ranch", a "ministry" and a "hospital" can all meet these four tests. You can look programs up in our program directory and on the network map, and the glossary explains the industry's vocabulary.

Why do kids get sent away?

For many different reasons, and often for reasons that have nothing to do with anything the child did.

Young people end up in programs through their parents, school districts, mental health providers, courts and probation, child welfare agencies and even refugee resettlement agencies. Some of the reasons we see most:

  • A mental health crisis: depression, self-harm, a suicide attempt, an eating disorder, or a diagnosis the family was not able to manage at home.
  • Drugs or alcohol, or the fear of them.
  • Ordinary teenage behavior: arguing, skipping school, bad grades, sneaking out, dating someone the family disapproves of.
  • Who they are. LGBTQ young people, kids who question the family's religion, and autistic or disabled kids are sent away to be changed.
  • What happened to them. Many children in programs are survivors of abuse or trauma, and are treated as the problem.
  • Family changes: divorce, a new stepparent, an adoption that is falling apart.
  • Nowhere else to go. Children in foster care or the juvenile justice system are placed wherever there is a bed, sometimes in another state.

Most parents who send a child are frightened and are told this is the only way to save them. The industry is very good at selling to frightened parents: educational consultants, therapists and websites tell them that an ordinary problem is an emergency that only a program can fix. Our Where Are the Kids? pages follow where children are sent.

What is an educational consultant?

An educational consultant (often "EdCon") is a private advisor that families pay, often thousands of dollars, to recommend a school or program for their child. For struggling teenagers, that usually means a wilderness program, then a therapeutic boarding school or residential treatment center.

The field is unregulated. Anyone can call themselves an educational consultant, and no license or training is required. Many consultants have close professional or financial ties to the programs they recommend: programs court them with visits, trips and conferences, and some consultants have worked for or owned programs themselves. A family may never learn about those ties. Since 2021 Oregon has required referrers to tell families about recent deaths and abuse at a program, its licenses, and any payment they get from it. Most states require nothing.

The Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) is a trade group, not a regulator. See our Referrers and Educational Consultants page and the glossary.

What are transporters?

Transporters, or youth transport companies, are businesses that parents hire to take their child to a program. They usually come in the middle of the night or early in the morning, wake the child up, and tell them they can go the easy way or the hard way. Some use handcuffs, restraints or force. Survivors call it being "gooned", after the escorts they call "goons".

It is legal in most places because a parent has authorized it: the transporters act for the parent, so it is not treated as kidnapping. Programs and consultants often recommend transport services, and some program founders have run transport companies too. Very few states license or inspect transporters; Oregon has required a license since 2021. Many survivors describe their transport as one of the most frightening things that ever happened to them.

See our list of youth transport companies.

What's with all the weird vocabulary?

Every program has its own language, and that is not an accident.

  • It hides what is happening. Programs rename punishment, isolation and control as "consequences", "reflection" and "support". A child in "observation placement" may be isolated for weeks. A "seminar" or "propheet" may be days of forced confession and humiliation. Parents hear the soft word and often learn what it meant years later.
  • It controls how young people think. Special words for feelings, rule-breaking and the program itself make it hard to think or talk about it in any other terms. Researchers who study coercive groups call this loading the language.
  • It keeps kids from being understood. A young person who says they were "on bans" or "in iso" is hard to understand from outside, even by a parent or an investigator.
  • It marks the lineage. The same terms show up at programs that share founders, staff or methods, which helps trace where a program came from.

Survivors have their own words too, like "gooned" for being taken by transporters. Our glossary explains hundreds of these terms and lists the programs where each one was used.

Did it really start with a cult called Synanon?

Partly. Synanon is the most famous ancestor of one arm of the troubled teen industry, but it is not the only one.

Synanon began in 1958 in Santa Monica as a live-in program for adults with drug and alcohol problems, founded by Chuck Dederich, a former AA member. Its core practice was "the Game", in which members confronted and insulted each other for hours. It later became a violent cult, and it dissolved in 1991.

Synanon's methods spread through the programs it inspired. Daytop Village (1964) and Phoenix House (1967) were built on its model. Mel Wasserman, a former Synanon member, founded CEDU in California in 1967, often called the first therapeutic boarding school; CEDU's staff and spin-offs went on to open many of the programs that exist today. The Seed in Florida was modeled on Synanon, and Straight, Inc. (1976) grew out of The Seed. Straight's methods live on in programs that copied it after it closed. Our network map shows who came from where.

Other roots matter just as much:

  • Juvenile justice. Reform schools and "houses of refuge" were locking up children for their own good in the 1800s. After the Second World War, an Army method called Guided Group Interaction, in which young people enforce the rules on each other, was tried on delinquent boys at Highfields in New Jersey (1949) and at the Pinehills Center in Provo, Utah (1956).
  • Fundamentalist religious homes. Lester Roloff opened his first home for boys in Texas in 1958, built on Bible study, forced labor and beatings. His model spread through independent Baptist and other Christian reform schools.
  • Seminar training. Confrontational "large group awareness trainings" of the 1970s, like Lifespring, shaped the seminars at many later programs, including the WWASP chain.
  • Business. Psychiatric hospital chains in the 1980s, and private equity from the late 1990s on, turned these methods into an industry.

Read more in How the Modern TTI Took Shape, 1919 to 1969, Experimental Group Psychology and Corporatization of Residential Treatment.

If they're licensed, does that mean they're safe?

No. A license means a program met a state's minimum rules when it was checked. It does not mean the program is safe, or that it works.

  • The rules are a floor. Licensing rules cover things like staffing ratios, fire safety and paperwork. In many states they still allow restraint, seclusion and long limits on contact with family.
  • Inspections are rare, and sometimes announced. Licensing offices are small. Utah, home to more programs than almost any state, has had about 30 licensing staff for thousands of treatment programs.
  • Violations rarely close a program. Our inspection reports and severe reports show licensed programs cited again and again for injuries, restraints and abuse, and still open.
  • The license may not cover what they do. A program licensed as a school may not be inspected as a treatment center at all.
  • Accreditation and membership are not licenses. Accreditation from groups like the Joint Commission or CARF is a paid, private review. Membership in NATSAP is membership in a trade association. Children have died in licensed, accredited member programs.
  • Programs close and reopen. A program in trouble can close and reopen under a new name or a new owner, and the record may not follow it. Our network map tracks those renamings.

Check a program's record yourself before trusting its license.

Is this like Dr. Phil?

Yes. The Dr. Phil show is one of the best-known pipelines into the troubled teen industry. For years the show featured "out of control" teenagers, and Phil McGraw urged their parents, on camera, to send them to programs. Some were taken there straight from the show.

Many went to Turn-About Ranch in Utah. Danielle Bregoli went there at 13 after her 2016 episode, and has since described abuse there, including in the documentary Teen Torture, Inc. Hannah Archuleta sued, saying the show pressured her parents to send her to Turn-About Ranch, where she says a staff member groped her and she was punished for reporting it. In 2014 another family sued Dr. Phil and a Utah treatment center (see Elevations RTC).

TV turned private family crises into entertainment and advertised the idea that a struggling teenager needs to be sent away. The show ended in 2023, but that idea is still what the industry sells.

Maybe some of them are bad, but aren't some okay?

Some staff are kind. Some programs are less harmful than others, and some young people leave better off than they arrived. But the problems are not a few bad programs. They come from how the industry works.

  • Isolation is built in. Most programs limit or monitor calls and letters home, especially at first, and tell parents to distrust what their child says. That makes abuse very hard to detect, even in a program with good intentions.
  • The money rewards keeping kids in. Programs are paid for full beds. Many are owned by private equity firms or publicly traded companies that answer to investors. In 2024 a two-year U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigation of four of the largest operators found that the business model itself leads to systemic harm.
  • Oversight is thin. Rules differ in every state, some states barely license these programs at all, and religious programs have often been exempt. A program can move across a state line to avoid a law.
  • Reputation does not protect children. Children have died in programs that were accredited, well reviewed and members of the main trade association. Our Investigatory Spotlight on NATSAP looks at deaths in its member programs.
  • There is little evidence it works. There is no strong evidence that sending a young person away to a residential program works better than help at home and in their community, and there is a lot of evidence of harm.

Some young people do need care away from home for a while, for example a short hospital stay while they are in immediate danger. Safer care is short, close to home, and keeps the family involved, with the young person able to call home freely and privately. It does not use restraint or seclusion as punishment, and it does not ask parents to sign away visits or distrust their child. If a program cannot say yes to those things, see the red flags below.

Why do some survivors say they weren't abused, even when the evidence says they were?

There are a few reasons, and they often overlap. None of them means the person is lying.

  • The program taught them to see it that way. Many programs are built to convince young people that they deserved what happened. Kids are told every day that they are manipulative, that their lives depend on "working the program", and that punishment is love. When you are a teenager and that is the only story you hear for months or years, it becomes your story.
  • They had to believe it to get out. In many programs, the only way to move up the levels and go home is to say the program is helping you and to report on other kids. Some survivors spent so long performing gratitude that it is hard to stop.
  • It protects their family. Their parents chose the program and often paid a great deal for it. Saying it was abuse can mean saying that their parents, whom they love, sent them to be hurt. Some families only stay close as long as nobody says that out loud.
  • It protects them. Admitting that you were powerless, or that you did things to other kids because you were made to, is painful. "It was tough, but I needed it" can feel safer.
  • It was normal there. Being restrained, isolated or made to sit facing a wall for days was what happened to everyone. Many people do not recognize it as abuse until they tell someone outside and see their face.
  • Experiences really do differ. Two people at the same program, or the same program in different years, can have very different experiences. Some survivors were harmed less than others.

Many survivors who now speak out against the industry defended their programs for years first. Understanding often comes slowly, and for some people it never comes. We do not tell anyone what their experience was. But one person's good experience does not cancel out the documented harm to others, and a program cannot be judged by its graduates' testimonials alone. The evidence that matters is in inspection reports, lawsuits, court records and the accounts of people who were hurt.

Who is supporting this politically?

This is not a left or right issue. Politicians of both major parties have helped the industry, and politicians of both parties have voted to rein it in.

What keeps the industry going

  • Public money. Many young people in these programs are placed and paid for by states, through Medicaid, foster care, juvenile justice and school districts. The Senate Finance Committee's 2024 report, Warehouses of Neglect, described taxpayers funding systemic abuse.
  • Trade associations and lobbying. Groups like NATSAP, the Outdoor Behavioral Health Council and the Independent Educational Consultants Association lend programs legitimacy. NATSAP opposed the 2008 federal bill that would have set national standards and banned the worst practices. The largest operators, including publicly traded companies, lobby in Washington; their filings are public in the Senate lobbying disclosure database.
  • Religious exemptions. Many states let religious programs skip the licensing other programs need. In 1997 Texas, at Governor George W. Bush's urging, let faith-based children's homes be accredited by a private religious association instead of the state, and Lester Roloff's homes came back to Texas (Austin Chronicle). Until 2021, Missouri did not require religious programs even to tell the state they existed.
  • Industry insiders regulating the industry. Until 2019, Montana's private programs were overseen by a board led by people who ran programs.
  • Friends in high places. Straight, Inc. was co-founded in 1976 by Mel Sembler, a major Republican fundraiser who later served as U.S. ambassador to Australia and to Italy. Nancy Reagan visited Straight in 1982 and 1984 as part of her "Just Say No" campaign. In 1977 North Carolina's Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, invited the Eckerd wilderness camps into his state. See Temperance and the War on Drugs and Corporatization of Residential Treatment.

Who is pushing back

Survivors, families and advocates, mostly. A federal bill to set national standards, the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act, passed the House in 2008 and again in 2009, and died in the Senate each time. In December 2024 the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act became law after passing both houses without opposition, led by Democrats and Republicans together. It creates a federal work group and a national study, but it does not set standards or ban anything, and NATSAP endorsed it. Since 2019 several states, including Utah, Oregon, Montana and Missouri, have passed their own limits on restraint, seclusion and secrecy. We track bills on our Legislative Efforts page and the history of the fight in Survivors and Families Fight Back.

Why do you include juvenile detention centers in your data?

Because the line between the troubled teen industry and juvenile justice is much thinner than it looks. We include a juvenile justice facility when it meets the same four tests as any other program (see "How we decide what counts" above).

  • The same promise. Juvenile justice is built on treatment, not punishment. The first juvenile court, in Chicago in 1899, was founded to rehabilitate children rather than punish them, and juvenile facilities still promise counseling, therapy and behavior programs. That is the same promise every other program in the industry makes, and it is made to the same kinds of children.
  • The same kids. Courts, probation offices and child welfare agencies send young people to private residential programs every day. Some programs take only court-ordered youth. A child can land in a "treatment center" or a "detention center" depending on their family's money and their county's contracts.
  • The same pipeline. Detention is often where a child waits for a bed in a residential program, and a court order can send them straight from one to the other. Those waits are not short: on the day of the 2017 national count of young people in custody, 43% of youth held in detention had been there at least 30 days.
  • The same companies. Many operators run both. Universal Health Services, one of the largest TTI operators, bought juvenile detention facilities in 2005. Sequel, Youth Services International and others built businesses on state juvenile justice contracts.
  • The same methods. Restraint, isolation, level systems and peer punishment are used on both sides of the line. Many of the TTI's methods were first tried on delinquent boys, at Highfields in 1949 and the Pinehills Center in Provo in 1956.
  • The same incentives. In Pennsylvania's "Kids for Cash" scandal, uncovered in 2008, two judges took millions of dollars in kickbacks for sending children to privately run juvenile facilities.
  • The same lack of scrutiny. Young people in the justice system are the least likely to be believed when they report abuse. Being in trouble with the law never makes abuse acceptable.

Our Juvenile Justice Timeline traces this history.

What are some red flags to watch out for?

No single sign proves a program is abusive, but each of these is a reason to stop and ask hard questions.

  • Limits on contact. Your child cannot call or write to you freely and privately, especially in the first weeks, or staff read the letters.
  • Warnings not to believe your child. You are told in advance that your child will lie, "manipulate" and beg to come home, and that you should not listen.
  • Transport. The program or your consultant suggests having your child taken from home by a transport company, often at night.
  • Pressure to decide fast. You are pushed to enroll within days, or told your child's life depends on acting now.
  • A referral with strings. An educational consultant or referral service recommends the program but will not say whether it is paid by the program.
  • Levels and privileges. Basic things like talking, family calls, going outside or wearing your own clothes have to be earned.
  • Confrontation and confession. Group sessions where young people are made to confront, shame or report on each other, or long seminars that break people down.
  • Restraint and seclusion. The program restrains or isolates young people, whatever it calls it, or will not tell you how often it does.
  • No unannounced visits. You cannot visit without warning, or see where your child sleeps and eats.
  • Contracts and length. Long minimum stays, penalties for taking your child home early, or agreements not to talk about the program.
  • Far from home, or out of the country. Distance makes it harder for you to check on your child and for them to get help.
  • The wrong license. A program licensed as a school, or not licensed at all, but claiming to give therapy or treatment.
  • Success rates without data. Big claims about outcomes that no independent study backs up.

Before you choose a program, look it up. Search our program directory, check the inspection reports and lawsuits, and read the state licensing records. Our glossary explains terms programs use.

What can I do to help?

  • Believe survivors. If someone tells you what happened to them in a program, listen. Our For Survivors and For Family and Friends pages have resources.
  • Report abuse. If a young person is being hurt in a program now, or you know of past abuse, our Report Abuse page lists the agencies to contact in every state.
  • Share what you know. Send us corrections and information about programs through the data submission form, tell us about lawsuits and bills, or send documents anonymously.
  • Volunteer. We need researchers, writers and people to help sort records. See Volunteer.
  • Contact your lawmakers. Ask your state and federal representatives what they are doing about youth residential programs. Our Legislative Efforts page tracks bills you can support. There are also guides for advocates and journalists.
  • Use our data. Everything we have gathered is free to download on our Open Data page.
  • Donate. Kids Over Profits is run by survivors and volunteers. Donations keep the research going.
  • Tell other parents. Share this page with anyone considering a program for their child.

Last updated September 2026. Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us.