Meg Appelgate
speaker
102 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Meg Appelgate’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
Yeah, no, it really is. I myself was actually kidnapped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported to a facility.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. No, it's the inner workings of something referred to as the troubled teen industry.
Yeah, you would absolutely think that, right? Even more daunting is what it entails. The troubled teen industry is basically a powerful network of residential facilities that claim to fix struggling youth. Of course, the definition of struggling is up to whoever is responsible for putting them there. This can range from mental health concerns to social problems to homosexuality.
Essentially, anything deemed needing fixing.
Yeah, 100 percent. The only thing I was doing to get sent away was smoking pot and struggling in school and socially. And for many youth, they're there for years.
That's the thing. So there's this well-known German psychologist named Erik Erikson, and he says teens are supposed to be a little rebellious. It's part of figuring out who they are. So when teens start testing boundaries, refusing to do chores, or having power struggles with their parents, it's not just normal. It's crucial for their development.
They're trying to explore their own values and beliefs outside of what their family tells them.
Right. Yeah, no, these programs are master marketers. They use scare tactics to make typical teen stuff like talking back, breaking the rules, mood swings, power struggles, or even just being sexually active sound like a crisis that needs extreme measures. Then they make themselves look like the answer to everyone's prayers, advertising to them that they can handle any and every teen issue.
My parents were literally told that if they didn't do something and quick, I would die. You'd be surprised how they can light a fire under a parent's butt to make a move.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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