There are just so few options for help when you have a child who is troubled and acting out. I live in what turns out to be the worst state for mental health and I have a student whose parents are just so lost. They have her in therapy with respite, attendant care, and case management workers. They've done individual and family therapy. The student is not a candidate for residential hospitalization because the acting out is not targeted at harming themself or other people. The student is rude (and I know that is an understatement but there's no word in English for Severely, pathologically rude to everyone around), starts fights with others, skips school, skips classes, sneaks out at night/runs away, destroys the parents' property, gets caught with older kids/(actual damn adults) using substances.

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The only thing that hasn't been done/happened is criminal charges. The parents obviously do not want to call the police on their own child and when the child is caught out, the police just have the parents (who happen to be a small-town mayor plus a small town medical professional) come pick the child up.

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Would juvenile detention help? Probably not. And juvenile detention doesn't really get handed down for tearing up your own stuff and being with some older boys while drinking and riding around town.

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I'm not knocking these parents' character, but I can see them getting desperate enough to send their child to a private residential turnaround facility. The kid is almost 17, and the time that everyone working with them has to teach them appropriate ways to behave in the world is rapidly shrinking and right now, if that person were to be on their own, it would be a disaster.

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People don't make use of these places because they are evil and uncaring, they make use of them because as a society we have failed to meet the mental and behavioral health needs of the population and left room for charlatans to fill in.