Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs

Each year thousands of young adults deemed out of control—suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety, and rage—are carted off against their will to remote wilderness programs and treatment facilities across the country. Desperate parents of these “troubled teens” fear it’s their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever.

Journalist Kenneth R. Rosen knows firsthand the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out at these programs. He lived it. In his new book Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs, Mr. Rosen unspools the stories of four graduates on their own scarred, faulted journey through the programs into adulthood. Based on three years of reporting and more than one hundred interviews with other clients, their parents, psychologists, and health-care professionals, Troubled combines harrowing storytelling with investigative journalism to expose the disturbing truth about the massively profitable, sometimes fatal, grossly unchecked redirection industry.

Mr. Rosen is a senior editor and correspondent at Newsweek based in Italy. He is a contributing writer at WIRED, and the journalist-in-residence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of two books of narrative nonfiction. Previously, he spent six years on staff at The New York Times.

Mr. Rosen will be interviewed by Darin Strauss, author of the new book The Queen of Tuesday. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and National Book Critics Circle Award winner (for his memoir Half a Life), and Clinical Professor of Fiction at New York University.

This event suitable for youth 12+.

BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Troubled or The Queen of Tuesday from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Strauss that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED for all FAN events. This event will be recorded and available later on our website and YouTube channel.