NCJ Number
198405
Date Published
2002
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This chapter describes and explains the rationale of the treatment regimen of the John Dewey Academy, which treats gifted, drug-dependent adolescents with group psychotherapy in a residential setting.
Abstract
The John Dewey Academy is a residential, college preparatory, therapeutic, voluntary high school. It mobilizes positive peer pressure. This structure, which emphasizes role expectations and individual empowerment while minimizing the number of rules and regulations, differentiates the academy community from other residential approaches. Students share in the daily management of the community, and rewards and consequences are structured for students. Encouraging adolescents to assess one another's behavior helps them internalize the guiding principles of the caring community. The academy fosters an unrelenting, uncompromising, and stressful environment where escalating expectations demand that everyone improve by changing rather than continuing dysfunctional, deceitful, destructive patterns of behavior. Prior to admission, 33 percent of the students have been hospitalized for at least 2 months; 80 percent have been treated by a psychiatrist; and 40 percent are admitted with an addiction to potent psychotropic medication. Students are expected not only to take control of their lives, but also to accept responsibility for their acts and attitudes. Sections of this chapter discuss the psychosocial-educational characteristics of gifted, self-destructive adolescents; the implications of psychopathology for treatment; the renegotiation of the parameters of confidentiality; group psychotherapy as the treatment of choice for dually diagnosed, drug-dependent adolescents; and advocacy as a treatment strategy. Guidelines are provided for addressing transference and countertransference in the therapeutic process and therapeutic techniques designed to meet the challenge of adolescent self-disclosure. 45 references