A $23B industry is warehousing and abusing teens under the guise of therapy. Survivor Meg Appelgate shares her harrowing story here on Skeptical Sunday. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by Meg Appelgate, the CEO of Unsilenced, a grassroots organization dedicated to speaking out against institutionalized child abuse in the troubled teen and youth mental health industry! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: The Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) is a vast, multi-billion dollar system that operates with minimal oversight, annually affecting 120,000-200,000 youth. Like an invisible web, it captures vulnerable teenagers through deceptive marketing and scare tactics, turning typical teenage behaviors into perceived crises that supposedly require extreme intervention. The industry's roots are deeply concerning, stemming from controversial organizations like Synanon and The Seed. These programs' techniques were so severe that a 1974 Senate report compared them to Korean War prisoner brainwashing methods — a chilling foundation that still echoes through today's practices. The long-term impact on survivors is devastating and scientifically measurable through Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores. Like a computer virus that corrupts system files, these experiences rewire the developing brain, leading to increased risks of physical and mental health issues - from depression to chronic diseases — that can persist throughout adulthood. Despite marketing themselves as therapeutic environments, many of these programs actually traumatize youth through practices like forced isolation, inappropriate restraints, medication misuse, and severe communication restrictions. It's akin to promising a safe harbor but delivering a perfect storm of institutional abuse. Positive change is happening through growing awareness and advocacy. Organizations like Unsilenced are making concrete progress - helping shut down 90 abusive programs since 2022, supporting survivors, and pushing for legislative reform. This momentum shows that with continued effort and awareness, we can protect vulnerable youth and create safer alternatives for struggling teenagers and their families. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] and let him know! Connect with Meg Appelgate at TikTok and Instagram, visit the Unsilenced website, and make sure to read... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the Troubled Teen Industry?
But what happens when the challenges of adolescence make parents feel like they need to find outside help? Enter the Troubled Teen Industry, a complex web of programs and facilities that claim to help troubled teens and their families survive. But are these programs the solution, or do they create even more problems?
Today, we're transporting ourselves to the troubled teen industry with survivor, advocate, and mother to her own teenager, Meg Applegate. Meg is the CEO of Unsilenced, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to help stop institutional child abuse by empowering self-advocates to create lasting social change. Meg, thanks for joining me. This is quite a topic we're going to deal with here today.
Hey, Jordan. Thanks for having me. It's quite an introduction and probably one that my teenager would roll their eyes at. It's funny you use the word transported because many of the kids that enter these programs are transported against their will, oftentimes in the middle of the night.
So this kind of sounds like kidnapping. Is it that dramatic? That's crazy, honestly.
Chapter 2: How are teens transported to these programs?
Yeah, no, it really is. I myself was actually kidnapped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported to a facility.
I'm trying to wrap my mind around this, right? Because this is, and we'll get into this, but I've had this happen to friends of mine too. Who comes to you in the middle of the night? Do they just take you out of your bed? I'm imagining them kind of like rolling you up in your bed sheets and carting you off in a van.
Yeah, transporters that my parents hired came to escort me to my first program. They woke me up, told me I was coming with them, and that we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
Chapter 3: Is the Troubled Teen Industry legal?
So this is insane, but I gotta ask, what is the hard way? Yeah, they told me that that way involved handcuffs. All right. So is this legal? I should know this, but I'm asking you because this is your industry. How did I not know that this was really going on in the world?
Like I've had friends that this happened to in the 90s and I thought like they were lying about it because it definitely sounds illegal. You can't just have someone kidnapped even if they're your kid. Can you?
Unfortunately, it is legal. You may be more aware of this industry than you think. Thinking back to when you were in high school, do you remember any kids that just disappeared all of a sudden? Maybe there were rumors of them going to tour Europe or going to boarding school or going to prison.
It's interesting that you bring this up because, you know, as I hinted towards the top of the show, I'd had friends who'd gone through some sort of weird experiences, but there was a buddy of mine who vanished for a year. Maybe it was slightly less. This is a kind of a troublemaking kid that I didn't want to hang out with too much because he always had like bad ideas.
And then he came back and he said, yeah, I just went to boarding school. And it just didn't add up because who goes to boarding school for one year and then comes back to their public school and says that it was a good experience? Like, if it's terrible, you come back after a year. If it's great, it all seemed weird to me.
And another friend of mine who was not actually a bad kid but was lost in life, he did some nature program where the story was that they left him in the woods alone with a box of crackers, and it was multiple weeks of this.
Wow. It sounds like that guy might have ended up in a wilderness program and was likely conned the same way so many others were. Sadly, that's more common than you'd think. And it's not just about roughing it in the woods. It often involves a lot more complicated and distressing situations.
These programs can be pretty harsh, and what goes on behind the scenes is often a lot darker than just camping and survival skills.
Now that I think about it, I'm like, how did he get food? Because he ate the whole box of crackers on the first night. That's what we were laughing about. But then I'm like, it's not funny when you're in the woods with no food.
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Chapter 4: What are the abusive practices in these programs?
It sounds like it's like reefer madness. She's smoking the reefer. She's going to drive her car off of a bridge. Exactly. Ridiculous. So basically, these companies say, is your kid not the little angel she was when she was 10? Don't worry, we'll whip her back into shape. And then it sounds like these kids spend these important formative years of adolescence in
eating leafs on crackers in the desert instead of working through their issues with a therapist or just like straight up having a normal life and outgrowing this nonsense.
Yep. And they take it even further, often claiming to be experts in an impossibly wide range of mental health diagnoses and behavioral issues to caregivers. They'll put lots of colorful pictures of smiling kids on their websites and show off horses and other animals you might see if you enroll.
So they're claiming to provide therapy and slash a petting zoo or whatever from the sound of it.
Exactly. They even use therapeutic buzzwords like evidence-based and trauma-informed care to draw in caregivers. But when my team at Unsilenced and I investigated, we found that most programs either don't use these methods at all or they misuse them. For instance, they might use therapeutic methods as a form of punishment for unwanted behavior.
So I'm no professional in this area, but it definitely doesn't sound like that's what therapy is supposed to be used for.
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Chapter 5: How do these programs manipulate families?
Not even close. And as I'm sure you know, a therapeutic relationship with a therapist can only exist when it's rooted in trust between the patient and the provider. But these facilities that claim to provide mental health treatment are holding kids against their will. So the relationship is often inherently rooted in distrust.
Yeah, I would imagine, first of all, it's hard enough to open up on a therapist's couch. It's probably even harder if you're strapped to the couch with leather straps or whatever. So rather than receiving true psychotherapy, it sounds like these kids come out with, at best, a skewed understanding of what therapy even looks like. And this actually jibes.
I get letters from people for our Feedback Friday segments, and they're like, This horrible thing happened and I'll write back, oh, you should definitely be in therapy about this and yada yada. And they're like, oh, I'm never gonna do therapy. I've had some bad experiences. And of course I'm like, what do you mean? How bad can a therapist be? And it's usually some variation of this.
My parents sent me to a thing and it turned out to be a cult or whatever. And it's like, oh, well, okay, now I get why you don't wanna go lay on somebody else's couch and get back right into that situation.
Exactly. And it's sad because survivors of these programs often leave skeptical and fearful of therapy because of the experiences. This leads to them being hesitant to seek out help even when they really need it. For example, the abuse I experienced while I was in the program came directly from my two therapists.
But because it came from people who had the title therapist, it didn't register as being abusive at the time. But now as an adult, it is extremely hard to trust or even go to a new therapist because of what happened to me.
Can I ask what happened?
Sure. In my line of work, I've learned to embrace being an open book. I experienced things like forced isolation, incorrect diagnoses and forced medication, name-calling and belittlement, forced labor to the point of injury, medical neglect. I had 8 to 16 hours of attack therapy per week. I experienced the removal of food and essential items as punishment.
And I had inappropriate physical and emotional relationship dynamics between my therapists and myself.
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Chapter 6: What is the role of taxpayer funding in this industry?
Exactly. I actually did that once for a program called Shepherd's Hill Academy. They have this 10-question quiz to help parents determine if they have a troubled teen. I took the quiz as a hypothetical parent, but instead of indicating my teen had issues, I put disagree to all of the behaviors they deemed were problematic. And guess what?
Even with all my answers being disagreeing, the quiz results still said, and I quote, it sounds like your teenager is experiencing moderate... to high levels of disobedience, anger, or risky behavior. They then, of course, go on to claim that Shepherd's Hill Academy was a solution to my non-existent problems.
Wow. So this is just completely rigged. It's not like a real assessment at all. It's just one of those marketing quizzes that the answer happens to be the product that we sell, regardless of what dots you've clicked on the test. Color me shocked that the front page of a marketing website doesn't have a proper therapeutic assessment.
But still, the level of callous disregard for the welfare of the kids that they're enrolling is a little bit baffling and seems like a class action lawsuit or 10 waiting to happen.
Exactly. It's completely rigged. Using only 10 vague questions, and even when my answers were all disagree, they recommended their 12-month residential treatment program for a team they've never met. If that doesn't scream rigged, I don't know what does.
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And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I think my buddies, well, one of my, the boarding school, air quotes, that guy was gone for a year, I think. But my other friend, it was like, it may be a month or two. I don't even know.
It's like they're selling a mattress. Do you prefer a firm sleep? Do you get warm at night? It's like they're selling a mattress instead of locking children up for money.
Yeah. If the mattress guaranteed a lifetime warranty of psychological trauma.
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Chapter 7: How do these programs market themselves?
You would see this group of staff come running in and they would throw the kid to the floor on their face and have a staff member holding each of their arms and legs down and a staff with their knee lodged in between their shoulder blades. Then another staff member would come by, pull the kid's pants down and give them some shot of a tranquilizer or another sedative to make them pass out.
Then they'd carry them off to a room to lock them up until they woke up.
Are they giving him a shot, like an intramuscular shot in the glute by force? Yes. This is like something we would expect to see in a movie about a dystopian insane asylum or whatever based on the Soviet Union. This is actually way worse than I've imagined.
Yeah, you're completely right. And as if that wasn't enough, there are disturbing reports of sexual assault and harassments of all kinds. I myself experienced extremely inappropriate relationship dynamics with my therapist while there. The male therapist used to have wrestling matches with all of the girls and even had us sit on his lap.
What? That is so pervy and wrong, not to mention totally illegal. So how do these places get away with this kind of abuse? Like, I'm guessing the kids can't tell anyone or no one believes them. There's no phones or no evidence. What's going on here?
The kids can't report the abuse because they have severe restrictions on communication with parents, lawyers, and other advocates. If a staff member tries to report it internally, they often get punished. These programs make kids live under their total authority, stripping away their autonomy for months to years. These kids are victims of institutional abuse.
The longer they stay in these places, the more likely they are to experience this abuse. This is especially true for kids with developmental disabilities who find themselves in these programs at an alarming rate. These kids are more likely to be abused, less likely to report the abuse, more likely to experience trauma-related symptoms, and less likely to be able to heal from the harm.
So these kids are really trapped in there. It seems like there's nothing they can do. I mean, any way you slice it, they're trapped in this place.
And that's just scratching the surface. We also hear many reports of physical and nutritional neglect, think food and sleep deprivation and restricted access to medical care. There is also medical abuse, including forced medication and overmedication. I myself remember being put on meds that had me drooling like a St. Bernard and made me gain 60 pounds in six months.
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Chapter 8: What are the psychological effects on survivors?
Okay, well, that's not education. If they're just making you digest material through brute force, it's more like indoctrination. I suppose it depends on what they're teaching you, but not being able to pee for 12 hours is a special kind of hell, and I don't think I could function in that environment.
Yeah, exactly. And you touched on something important. The troubled teen industry does have ties to cults. The roots of the industry are wild. So get this. Many modern day programs were actually inspired by a cult called Synanon.
A cult. So like robes and chanting level cults? Or are we talking more like religious fundamentalism stuff?
Pretty much. Synanon started in 1958 as an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous. They had this twisted group therapy called The Game, in which members would verbally attack each other until they broke down. Not exactly a Hallmark moment.
That sounds like a nightmare. I don't understand the point of that. I think a guest on the show, her dad was in it and so she was raised in it. So these types of cults helped kick off these youth programs. That doesn't bode well.
It's like if you told me that a kid's camp was founded by Scientology or something like, OK, maybe they have fun kite making activities or whatever, but I don't think I would run and sign up for that.
Child care and colts are a bad mix, generally.
Yes, generally.
And when I talk about the game, that's actually in reference to that attack therapy that I talked about earlier. It's the same exact thing.
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