Negitive reinforcment

[keiko]

Story from here


At the Rotenberg Center, students as young as nine and ten receive shocks for misbehaving. Employees wear remotes bearing a picture of each child around their waist so they don’t shock the wrong kid.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten. […]

The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the program continues to thrive—in large part because no one except desperate parents, and a few state legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.


~~

Sick. Sick and Wrong.

~K

[Buster Friendly]

yeah... places like this, and 'tranquility bay' in jamacia really chap my ass...

makes me believe in vengence, retribution... making the sick fucks who are making money off of this shit pay some sort of horrible price...

...ooooh, i know, maximum security resthomes where we round up the fuckers who do this shit, when they're too old, and feeble, and inflict the same sort of twisted shit from "the Prisioner" back on them... we'll call it "The Village: A Retirement Community"...

...my folks kinda figured that this sort of thing would be the last straw with me, and push me over the edge into full on all out sociopathic anarchist super villiandom. and boy were they ever right hahaha... as it is i still keep tabs on all of my old psychologists who recommended such bullshit to my parents... (you never know, one day you might snap completely, and need something to focus on, rather than terrorizing random innocents..)

...yeah... i lost a friend to 'doctors', they essentially destroyed his personality with anti-depressants, and bullshit therapies...

*sigh* parents actually PAY, and it ain't cheap.... not even slightly... to have this shit done to their kids...

[Donald Rilea]

yeah... places like this, and 'tranquility bay' in jamacia really chap my ass...

makes me believe in vengence, retribution... making the sick fucks who are making money off of this shit pay some sort of horrible price...

...ooooh, i know, maximum security resthomes where we round up the fuckers who do this shit, when they're too old, and feeble, and inflict the same sort of twisted shit from "the Prisioner" back on them... we'll call it "The Village: A Retirement Community"...

...my folks kinda figured that this sort of thing would be the last straw with me, and push me over the edge into full on all out sociopathic anarchist super villiandom. and boy were they ever right hahaha... as it is i still keep tabs on all of my old psychologists who recommended such bullshit to my parents... (you never know, one day you might snap completely, and need something to focus on, rather than terrorizing random innocents..)

...yeah... i lost a friend to 'doctors', they essentially destroyed his personality with anti-depressants, and bullshit therapies...

*sigh* parents actually PAY, and it ain't cheap.... not even slightly... to have this shit done to their kids...

Have heard about similar forms of aversion therapies done in other parts of the US over the years, and am most glad my folks NEVER, EVER tried putting me in this kind of a programme.

The usual excuse given by proponents of such programmes is that they are the only way in which to reach autistic and other special needs children, on whom other therapies have been tried and failed.

I would disagree on moral, ethical and simple practical grounds with that.

Morally, it is unjustified to inflict pain on anyone whose behaviour doesn't warrant it, and especially to deliberately do so on individuals who have little or no capacity to intelligently respond to it.

Ethically, it would be a violation of, at least in the case of psychologists, the Hippocratic Oath, the very last sentence of which states, above all, do no harm.

The deliberate infliction of such pain, however "mild", it might be advertised as being, over a prolonged course of time, is, in my view, harmful, especially psychologically, to the people upon whom it is being inflicted.

As for simple practical grounds, my argument goes something like this; depending on the levels of pain inflicted on someone over a given period of time, the individual will eventually become accustomed to it, and it will take greater levels of pain to get the same result as before.

Also, while one might eventually get an individual who may, because they've learnt to associate bad behaviour with painful punishment, become as pliantly obedient as an obedient child or whipped dog, once he or she's removed from that environment, and placed into a "freer" one, that doesn't mean that, if he or she feels sufficiently provoked, that the earlier bad behaviour might not resurface with a vengeance.

It also means that this individual, if he or she wasn't violent before such treatment, will come to associate violence with getting results, in one way or another.

Either that, or it will make them so fearful of being punished that, even if these patients can ever be made into "productive" members of society, they will be so afraid of doing anything, and I mean ANYTHING, that anyone in a position of authority, however small and limited, perceives as being "wrong", that they won't even have enough confidence to pee without permission, let alone do anything useful for themselves or anyone else.

Either way, it's a Devil's Bargin that desperate parents, psychologists and psychiatrists who use such methods strike with themselves, each other, the kids affected by them, and the society at large, and, in the end, I think it's a loathsome price to pay for whatever results they may get.

[a_small_death]

I wonder if this sort of thing would work on gw if someone put such a device around his neck and nads?

[One Eyed Cat]

Story from here


At the Rotenberg Center, students as young as nine and ten receive shocks for misbehaving. Employees wear remotes bearing a picture of each child around their waist so they don’t shock the wrong kid.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten. […]

The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the program continues to thrive—in large part because no one except desperate parents, and a few state legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.


~~

Sick. Sick and Wrong.

~K

Of course it's wrong. Don't drive yourself crazy hon. I still want to be able to roast marshmellows with you and Rob (and both our respective friends and loved ones) when a fiery karma comes home to roost.

JT

[keiko]

I'm sure that there are very few amongst us on this board , the supposedly "dysfunctional", that haven't been put through the ringer as far as our loving parents attempting to "make us better". I've been on everything from your garden variety Ritalin to Resparitol, an anti psychotic. Been denied everything from a bedroom door to caffeine (bad idea). But the point is I'm not someone who actually has a condition or physical disorder like Autism that makes me unable to perform simple tasks. I could see some one giving a normal person like me electroshock therapy for correctional behavior. I can't see doing it to some one who never had and will never have full command of their own body and all five senses, to a child or even to someone who is forever a child. It sickens me and infuriates me and destroys my faith in humanity jsut that much more.

~K

[Mindgames]

Just to move the debate sideways a moment, take a look at the full article, specifically the first paragraphs of this page which explain who is currently blocking the State from outlawing the school's methods:-

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feat...f_shock-5.html

[One Eyed Cat]

Just to move the debate sideways a moment, take a look at the full article, specifically the first paragraphs of this page which explain who is currently blocking the State from outlawing the school's methods:-

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feat...f_shock-5.html

I wish that surprised me more than it did. I'm at a loss for arguments beyond I hope they lose. Oh wait: the Judge, having been at the place as a kid, uses the bully pulpit for a few hours on them.

JT

[keiko]

I'm sure that these parents think that what has been/is happening to their children is "for their own good" and is "actually helping". Whether this is ACTUALLY the case or just lazy desperate people trying to find and easy answer is hard to say.

Fear is a great brainwashing tool. Fear of Pain even more so. It motivates ppl to do things they wouldn't normally do to avoid the things that scare and hurt them. Its also extremely petty and disgusting to the enlightened mind.

I could rant and expound upon my personal experiences here, but nothing I have ever dealt with remotely compares.

I could also draw parallels here from this brainwashing terror academy to the current state of the US what with the Patriot Act and Treason etc etc. But I re don't feel like typing that all up.

Draw your own conclusions.

~K

[One Eyed Cat]

I'm sure that these parents think that what has been/is happening to their children is "for their own good" and is "actually helping". Whether this is ACTUALLY the case or just lazy desperate people trying to find and easy answer is hard to say.

Fear is a great brainwashing tool. Fear of Pain even more so. It motivates ppl to do things they wouldn't normally do to avoid the things that scare and hurt them. Its also extremely petty and disgusting to the enlightened mind.

I could rant and expound upon my personal experiences here, but nothing I have ever dealt with remotely compares.

I could also draw parallels here from this brainwashing terror academy to the current state of the US what with the Patriot Act and Treason etc etc. But I re don't feel like typing that all up.

Draw your own conclusions.

~K

The parents bear the burden of proof of showing why electroshocking their kids is for their own good now. I am definitely going to enjoy seeing what arguments are presented.

JT

[Donald Rilea]

I'm sure that there are very few amongst us on this board , the supposedly "dysfunctional", that haven't been put through the ringer as far as our loving parents attempting to "make us better". I've been on everything from your garden variety Ritalin to Resparitol, an anti psychotic. Been denied everything from a bedroom door to caffeine (bad idea). But the point is I'm not someone who actually has a condition or physical disorder like Autism that makes me unable to perform simple tasks. I could see some one giving a normal person like me electroshock therapy for correctional behavior. I can't see doing it to some one who never had and will never have full command of their own body and all five senses, to a child or even to someone who is forever a child. It sickens me and infuriates me and destroys my faith in humanity jsut that much more.

~K

Keiko: Thanks for telling us your story as far as those kinds of therapies go, and am damned sorry you were put through them.

As for Autism, well, autism, like any other condition, has its degrees, and some autistics have greater degrees of it than others.

Also, autism, in the classic 1943 Kanner diagnosis, is associated with varying degrees of mental retardation(sorry to use the old term for developmental disability here, but I think the former's better understood by much of the general public than the latter), so, that kind of skews the picture a bit right there, too.

Some auties, like myself, don't have the mental retardation part of the classic autism diagnosis, and are able, to an extent, to essentially "pass" for so-called normal.

Others, because they have greater degrees of autism, and, perhaps, mental retardation as well, can't function nearly as well.

That said, I see no excuse on psychiatrists', psychologists', social workers', or other mental health care providers for the use of techniques like electro-shock aversion therapy.

Already said why in my last post here, so I won't bore you with a repeat.

As for myself, well, went through several diagnoses(ranging from psychotic at the age of three years, to emotionally disturbed, to, finally, high-functioning autism at the age of 11), several different programmes, including a neurological rehabilitation programe from the age of 11 to 17, and years of on-going cognitive behavioural therapy with my current therapist, whom I've been seeing since '94.

Was on Ritalin until I started on the neurological rehabilitation programme, and have been on Zoloft(more recently, its generic cousin Sertraline), and Propanolol since '97, and I would say that the last two therapy courses, along with the Sertraline and Propanolol, have come the closest to hitting the mark, as least as far as am concerned.

Don't know, and won't say, how lazy the parents who bring their children to such therapies as the one under discussion are, but I can, through however dark a glass, see at least some of their desperation.

Unfortunately for them, and far more so for their kids, there are therapists of various sorts who use that desperation as a means of getting the kids into their programmes.

From there, that's where the "fun" really begins.

For my money, there are always better solutions than ones in which pain is deliberately inflicted by one person upon another.

[keiko]

When I was younger I baby sat for for two boys, both coincidentally red heads named Brendan. Katy's brother was 6 when I watched him and Rachel's brother was 13. Both were very Autistic. Rachel's brother was brilliant, able to build anything, and I do mean anything, out of LEGOs. he might not have been able to talk but he could build you an exact replica of the starship enterprise. Katy's brother was a lot younger and hadn't yet developed even that much of an outlet for expressing himself, he acted out almost constantly. Somehow I managed to handle them, as a 12 yr old girl, with out using force or electroshock. Sweet words and a soft hand, the occasional sharp remark, was all I needed. But then I actually spent time with them and learned the ways they did communicate, easing their frustration and mine by putting in the EFFORT required.

This is why this story really really makes me want to vomit, and wish I had a flame thrower. In this world where we can get everything instantly, or at the longest overnight, we have zero patience and no one dedicates time and effort into anything. We all want a quick fix. Give me a pill, make me happy, make me thin, make me pretty, make me smart. Give them a pill, make them behave, make them smart, make them normal. When the pills don't work, we want something else, something like magic that will make it all better *snap* like that. No one feels the need to put any of themselves into helping themselves or others. If you put yourself out there, you get hurt. We don't want to get hurt, so we pull back, withdraw into our selves and leave it to sick fucks like this guy to come up with a quick fix for our problems.

I was going to go more into my own story here but I think that only needs to be posted in one place on the net. If you're really interested, PM me.

~K

[Xochitl]

My best friend passed away about 7 years ago & I blame the system AND his folks. Basically my friend was gay. Hard thing to do where we were from. He said his parents began to send him to doctors when he was about 5. Why? He didn't like to eat meat or go to church (he also acted very feminine). He would hide under beds or anywhere to not go. So they just started sending him to doctors, they put him on more & more meds. He was 11 when he did a stint in the state hospital where he really saw some crazy shit! I cannot imagine putting an 11-year-old child in a place like that for what THEY thought was wrong with him.

He was on all kinds of different anti-depressants that they are now finding are the cause of childhood suicide etc. He was a teenager when they finally gave up on institutionalizing him however the seed was planted & he had a terrible time with drugs. He had moments when he tried to live a "normal" life, he even got married but he wants happy & then the problems started again. He finally passed away from a hot dose of heroin. He even admitted that his drug issues were because of the amount of chemicals they put in him while he was a little boy.

It still breaks my heart because he was such a wonderful person with such a good heart. If I had a son like him I would have been proud. I wonder how the doctors could have done that & his parents just put it all on him instead of looking at themselves for just a minute & wonder if what they were doing had any bearing on the situation. This story is probably of many about kids who just get warehoused so that no one has to deal with them. It goes on everyday which is what is so ghastly.

[Donald Rilea]

When I was younger I baby sat for for two boys, both coincidentally red heads named Brendan. Katy's brother was 6 when I watched him and Rachel's brother was 13. Both were very Autistic. Rachel's brother was brilliant, able to build anything, and I do mean anything, out of LEGOs. he might not have been able to talk but he could build you an exact replica of the starship enterprise. Katy's brother was a lot younger and hadn't yet developed even that much of an outlet for expressing himself, he acted out almost constantly. Somehow I managed to handle them, as a 12 yr old girl, with out using force or electroshock. Sweet words and a soft hand, the occasional sharp remark, was all I needed. But then I actually spent time with them and learned the ways they did communicate, easing their frustration and mine by putting in the EFFORT required.

This is why this story really really makes me want to vomit, and wish I had a flame thrower. In this world where we can get everything instantly, or at the longest overnight, we have zero patience and no one dedicates time and effort into anything. We all want a quick fix. Give me a pill, make me happy, make me thin, make me pretty, make me smart. Give them a pill, make them behave, make them smart, make them normal. When the pills don't work, we want something else, something like magic that will make it all better *snap* like that. No one feels the need to put any of themselves into helping themselves or others. If you put yourself out there, you get hurt. We don't want to get hurt, so we pull back, withdraw into our selves and leave it to sick fucks like this guy to come up with a quick fix for our problems.

I was going to go more into my own story here but I think that only needs to be posted in one place on the net. If you're really interested, PM me.

~K

NP, Keiko. Will PM you ASAP, and am gonna stop with the Alphabet Soup here.

[sunkarma]

I had dogs when I was growing up. My father kept them out in the field and installed an electric fence around the perimeter so the dogs could not jump out of the yard or do anything silly. Unfortunately it was virtually invisible and one day I ran into it...
TALK ABOUT PAIN!
I don't think this is a good tool for animals- nor for people. It's inhumane and could lead to brain damage (I mean, look at ME for goodness sakes!- LOL)

Sun karma

[OliX]

As Keiko stated, time, effort and understanding is all those kids need. Not a damn electro shocks.
I also believe in natural healing when is it about depression or any other illness, I'm living proof of it.... here is some interesting reading on that topic http://world-mysteries.com/sci_15.htm