to ursus:...i think you can see by the post from whooter following yours exactly what kind of character this fellow is. Knowing absolutely nothing about the circumstances, he proclaims Hyde could not have had anything to do with my son's death and even describes the circumstances that would convince him otherwise...he is also now an expert on suicide and et al...His obsessive defense of this institution is a pathology in itself.
I wouldn't worry too much about Wh??ter's agenda. The admins here have seen fit to label him a parody, probably for good reason.
Moreover, he appears to fancy himself an expert on a variety of programs here, not just the Hyde Schools, and sees fit to pontificate accordingly with equally insightful contributions. So... respond or not, as you wish. Oft times I have more compelling material I'm focussed on, but sometimes I can't resist...
i am not ready, even after these years to discuss the details of what happened to my son, the long tortured path that led to his death. I said that Hyde was a station along the way and contributed, though Hyde is not solely responsible in that sense. am also afraid to give too much away that might identify me to Hyde trolls (like Whooter?) or others. The people at Hyde have shown they are quite capable of the most nefarious behavior in protecting their God Gauld and their little enterprise and I have no room left in me for fighting. I can tell you that they spun him like a rat...changing the maze whenever he thought he had it down and convincing him that he was a piece of s--- unless he played their game. He couldn't. He didn't. He failed there and they smashed his self-confidence to pieces. He was weak, mentally ill, needed some form of treatment but no one recognized it. I pulled him out jail over and over again, retrieved him from international locales after he'd been arrested, incarcerated in various institutions...his illness progressed and everyone along the way who made it worse - like the people at Hyde - contributed. I contributed myself. When your 20-year-old son takes your shotgun after breaking into a gun cabinet and blows his brains out, you are also destroyed by it. Suffice to say that the vulnerable types must be protected from institutions like Hyde because Hyde is no different from the general society, in that respect. Who doesn't conform, is destroyed. It is the school's failure to determine who it can help and who it cannot - who it will in fact make worse - that makes it a quasi-criminal enterprise. any truly idealistic institution would recognize its limitations to protect those it might harm. Not Hyde. Money drives hyde. Money, power and self-aggrandizement are its stock in trader. Once they get your money, it's actually in their interest to force you out because it's non-refundable and they get paid for not doing anything. Meanwhile the next fool steps up, urged on by Mr. Whooter, no doubt and another $30-40-50,000 goes into the company safe. It's a racket run by a kind of mafiosi, sociopaths with suits and sob stories and a very slick brochure. I really wonder what Whooter's agendas is here....do others?
As far as your son's experience goes, what with Hyde's inability and/or refusal to deal with his difficulties in an appropriately compassionate fashion, it's been my observation (which may very well be different from your observation or anybody else's observation) that, regardless of what's going on with your kid, Hyde plays the "mental illness" card according to what's in
Hyde School's best interests. That is, they generally claim, and prefer to claim, that it's all really a "character disorder" or moral flaws on the part of the child in question, and
not a mental illness.
However, should such a position prove untenable in light of the facts, and/or the kid suffers some unequivocal abuse at Hyde which could easily turn into a public relations nightmare, Hyde will claim that the kid is mentally ill, or something along those lines, whether or not they actually are, and try to get rid of him or her.
To my knowledge, Hyde School is really not equipped to deal with, and cannot claim to actually diagnose or treat any serious mental illness, although that may have changed.
There have been other posters here who've maintained that, in the past, certain kids were even more or less "encouraged" to run away. Whether that still goes on, I have no idea. I'm sure Hyde claims that it "never happened," a type of assertion on their part that I've learned to become more than a little suspicious of...
