Maia Szalavitz | |
|---|---|
 Szalavitz in October 2020 | |
| Born | March 29, 1965 |
| Occupation | Writer, author |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Monroe-Woodbury High School Columbia University Brooklyn College |
| Notable works | Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids |
Maia Pearl Szalavitz (born March 29, 1965) is an American reporter and author who focuses on science, public policy and addiction treatment.
Maia Szalavitz was born March 29, 1965. She was raised in upstate New York. She graduated from Monroe-Woodbury High School in 1983 and attended Columbia University. She graduated cum laude from Brooklyn College. [1]
Szalavitz was addicted to cocaine and heroin in her late teens and early twenties, an experience that has informed her writing on addiction. [2]
Szalavitz is best known as the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids , a 2006 exposé documenting abuse in the insufficiently regulated troubled teen industry. She has written many other books including Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential – and Endangered (Morrow, 2010) and The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (Basic, 2006), both coauthored with Dr. Bruce D. Perry; and co-authored Recovery Options: The Complete Guide with Dr. Joseph Volpicelli.
Paul Raeburn at Knight Science Journalism at MIT called her "...the best writer I know of on addiction and related issues." [3]
Szalavitz blogs for the Huffington Post and has written for the New York Times , the Washington Post , Newsday , New York magazine, New Scientist , Newsweek , Elle , Salon , Redbook and other major publications. She has also worked in television – first as Associate Producer and then Segment Producer for the PBS Charlie Rose Show, then on several documentaries including a Barbara Walters' AIDS special for ABC, and as Series Researcher and Associate Producer for the PBS documentary series Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home.
Szalavitz is an investigative reporter for Time magazine, and since 2004 has been a senior fellow at George Mason University's media watchdog group Statistical Assessment Service.
In 2009, Szalavitz partnered with Brent W. Jeffs and released Lost Boy, a biography of Jeffs' life in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
In March 2016, her book Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction was published [4] by St. Martin's Press. Szalavitz was a 2015 Soros Media fellow, which supported her in writing this book. [5]
In 2021 she published a history of the harm reduction movement, Undoing Drugs : the Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction. [6]
She has been awarded the American Psychological Association's Division 50 Award for Contributions to the Addictions, the Media Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Drug Policy Alliance's 2005 Edward M. Brecher Award for Achievement.
Harm reduction, or harm minimization, refers to a range of intentional practices and public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal. Harm reduction is used to decrease negative consequences of recreational drug use and sexual activity without requiring abstinence, recognizing that those unable or unwilling to stop can still make positive change to protect themselves and others.
The disease model of addiction describes an addiction as a disease with biological, neurological, genetic, and environmental sources of origin. The traditional medical model of disease requires only that an abnormal condition be present that causes discomfort, dysfunction, or distress to the affected individual. The contemporary medical model attributes addiction, in part, to changes in the brain's mesolimbic pathway. The medical model also takes into consideration that such disease may be the result of other biological, psychological or sociological entities despite an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of these entities.
Synanon, originally known as Tender Loving Care, is a new religious movement founded in 1958 by Charles E. "Chuck" Dederich Sr. in Santa Monica, California, United States. Originally established as a drug rehabilitation program, Synanon developed into an alternative community centered on group truth-telling sessions that came to be known as the "Synanon Game," a form of attack therapy. The group ultimately became a cult called the Church of Synanon in the 1970s.
Tough love is the act of treating a person sternly or harshly with the intent to help them in the long run.
Bruce D. Perry is an American psychiatrist, currently the senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. A clinician and researcher in children's mental health and the neurosciences, from 1993 to 2001 he was the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. He is also the author of several books.
Attack therapy was one of several pseudo-therapeutic methods described in the book Crazy Therapies. It involves highly confrontational interaction between the patient and a therapist, or between the patient and fellow patients during group therapy, in which the patient may be verbally abused, denounced, or humiliated by the therapist or other members of the group.
Élan School was a private, coeducational, and abusive residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school in Poland, Androscoggin County, Maine. It was a full member of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP) and was considered to be a part of the troubled teen industry. The facility was closed down on April 1, 2011, due to reports of abuse, many from former students, dating back to its opening in 1970.
A sober companion is a human services-related career path with the goal of helping the client maintain total abstinence or harm reduction from any addiction, and to establish healthy routines at home or after checking out of a residential treatment facility. Although regulations do not exist for the specific sober companion position, ethical existing peoples and businesses abide by the U.S. standards of mental health treatment. A sober companion may be a part of a whole medical and/or a clinical team of professional(s), may be formally licensed as a mental health professional, or have well-respected experiential experience in the field and/or may work independently on their own.
Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, later called simply Rehab with Dr. Drew, is a reality television show that aired on the cable network VH1 in which many of the episodes chronicle a group of well-known people as they are treated for alcohol and drug addiction by Dr. Drew Pinsky and his staff at the Pasadena Recovery Center in Pasadena, California. The first five seasons of the series, on which Pinsky also serves as executive producer, cast celebrities struggling with addiction, with the first season premiering on January 10, 2008, and the fifth airing in 2011.
The Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by former US Ambassador Mel Sembler, his wife Betty Sembler (née Schlesinger), and Joseph Zappala as Straight, Inc., renamed The Straight Foundation, Inc. in 1985 and Drug Free America Foundation in 1995.
Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids is a non-fiction book by Maia Szalavitz analyzing the controversy surrounding the troubled teen industry. The book was published February 16, 2006, by Riverhead Books. Szalavitz focuses on four programs: Straight, Incorporated, a copy of the Straight Inc. program called KIDS, North Star wilderness boot camp, and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. She discusses the background, history and methodology of the troubled-teen industry, including techniques drawn from attack therapy and Synanon. She uses first-person accounts and court testimony in her research, and states that no evidence exists proving that these programs are effective. The book also includes advice for parents and an appendix with additional resources on how to get responsible help for teenagers.
The drug policy of Portugal, informally called the "drug strategy", was put in place in 2000, and came into effect in July 2001. Its purpose was to reduce the number of new HIV/AIDS cases in the country, as it was estimated around half of new cases came from injection drug use.
Daytop, or Daytop Village, is a drug addiction treatment organization with facilities in New York City. It was founded in 1963 in Tottenville, Staten Island by Daniel Harold Casriel along with Monsignor William B. O'Brien, a Roman Catholic priest and founder and president of the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities. Ron Brancato from the Pelham Bay area of Bronx New York, Program Director and former resident of Synanon, California. Synanon was the only drug rehabilitation program until Daytop Village NY.
Addiction is generally a neuropsychological disorder defining pervasive and intense urge to engage in maladaptive behaviors providing immediate sensory rewards, despite their harmful consequences. Dependence is generally an addiction that can involve withdrawal issues. Addictive disorder is a category of mental disorders defining important intensities of addictions or dependences, which induce functional disabilities. There are no agreed definitions on these terms – see section on 'definitions'.
About 1 in 7 Americans suffer from active addiction to a particular substance. Addiction can cause physical, psychological, and emotional harm to those who are affected by it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as "a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual's life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences." In the world of psychology and medicine, there are two models that are commonly used in understanding the psychology behind addiction itself. One model is referred to as the disease model of addiction. The disease model suggests that addiction is a diagnosable disease similar to cancer or diabetes. This model attributes addiction to a chemical imbalance in an individual's brain that could be caused by genetics or environmental factors. The second model is the choice model of addiction, which holds that addiction is a result of voluntary actions rather than some dysfunction of the brain. Through this model, addiction is viewed as a choice and is studied through components of the brain such as reward, stress, and memory. Substance addictions relate to drugs, alcohol, and smoking. Process addictions relate to non-substance-related behaviors such as gambling, spending money, sexual activity, gaming, spending time on the internet, and eating.
Responsible drug use maximizes the benefits and reduces the risk of negative impact psychoactive drugs cause on the lives of the user. For illegal psychoactive drugs that are not diverted prescription controlled substances, some critics believe that illegal recreational drug use is inherently irresponsible, due to the unpredictable and unmonitored strength and purity of the drugs and the risks of addiction, infection, and other side effects.
Richard Elovich is a social psychologist, writer, performance artist, and AIDS activist focusing on harm reduction and low-threshold approaches to drug treatment.
The troubled teen industry is a term used to refer to a broad range of youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers. The term encompasses various facilities and programs, including youth residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, and therapeutic boarding schools.
Joseph R. Volpicelli is an American psychiatrist, research scientist, medical educator, and expert in the treatment of addictive disorders. He is board certified in neurology, psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He is currently the Medical Director at Volpicelli Center, an out-patient addiction treatment facility in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, as well as the Executive Director at Institute of Addiction Medicine, a non-profit research entity also in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.
The National Harm Reduction Coalition, previously known as the Harm Reduction Coalition, is an American harm reduction advocacy group.
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