When parents seek out which is the best adolescent treatment program for their troubled teenager it would be best to accumulate a little research beforehand. When you begin talking with a professional, you want to have a basic understanding of the terminology that will be used, and a basic grasp of the types of teen behavioral treatment therapies that are available.

Know Your Teen's History of Abuse

The parent must also be prepared to provide the counselor or therapist information on their teenager as well. As suggested elsewhere, have a small biography prepared about your teenager so that you can easily answer questions when interviewing counselors and therapists about an adolescent treatment program.

You will be asked how long your teen has been abusing. Is the abuse been accompanied by depression? Does your teen have a history of depression? Was your teen involved in any needle use or unprotected sex? Any adolescent treatment program will likely require a physical exam to test for HIV/Aids and diseases associated with drug use as well as to determine if there are any underlying physical reasons for the depression or anxiety that so often precipitates a teen's use of drugs.

Adolescent Treatment Programs Must Fit the Teen

It depends on your teenagers degree of involvement with drugs as to what type of adolescent treatment program is most applicable and compatible with your teen's needs. Many parents do not take any chances and immediately begin addressing their teen's experimentation with drugs by seeking out the many early intervention or student assistance programs available from schools, justice systems and churches that work to educate teenagers and parents about teen substance abuse before addiction occurs.

A Holistic Adolescent Treatment Program

A adolescent treatment program should be multi dimensional in it's approach, treating the entire adolescent, not just focusing on addiction or destructive behavior, but encompassing the teen's entire personality. A thorough adolescent treatment program will not only address behavioral and psychological issues but encompass the physical, academic and spiritual well being of the out of control teen.

In choosing an adolescent treatment program, you will be developing the same criteria that you would use in choosing a teen boarding school or brat camp. Often a parent's choice of a particular troubled teen boarding school will be based on a specific adolescent treatment program that has been noted for successfully equipping a teen to be powerful in their lives, such as animal assisted therapy or the discipline of Positive Peer Culture.

Teen Substance abuse. Three little words that define a monstrous problem for parents and the nation alike. Today's parent rightly feels overwhelmed when trying to grapple with the most effective way to confront teen substance abuse in their families while the educational system and government leaders struggle to create programs to fight teen substance abuse in schools and communities.

A Thousand Battles

The war on drugs comes down to thousands of families waging thousands upon thousands of small battles against teen substance abuse in their own living rooms, in doctors offices, in school classrooms, and in military schools and residential teen boarding schools.

Teen substance abuse has moved from a problem, hidden under the rug and out of sight, to a required course in the curriculum of a teen's life. Teen substance abuse used to be just a bogey man living in shadows. Then it became the kid dealing on the corner down a block from the school, then teen substance abuse showed up as your son's buddy on the football team who got turned on by his big brother, then as the high school coach ignoring steroids in the locker room.

Teen substance abuse went from being an unlikely visitor in a family's life to becoming a constant threat and frequent intruder.

Parents War on Drugs

Crack cocaine, meth, pot, club drugs, designer drugs, prescription drugs, over the counter drugs, inhalants and hallucinogens all constitute just a portion of the arsenal that teen substance abuse is packing and unfortunately, the rule of "six degrees of separation" applies to a teenager's world as well. A parent today realizes that within their at-risk teen's circle of friends, someone is dealing and someone is using.

As formidable an enemy as teen substance abuse has become, the tools at a parent's disposal have grown rather formidable too. Counties, municipalities and small villages all have some type of substance abuse program in place. Schools and churches and non-profit groups all have or are developing programs to fight teen substance abuse.

And parents now have access to a large number of respected therapeutic drug treatments and teen rehabilitation programs through boot camps, troubled teen boarding schools, brat camps and wilderness therapies.

Unlike 40 years ago when schools and parents only had movies like "Reefer Madness" to use as educational tools, today's parents have a vast reservoir of information on teen substance abuse at the tips of their finger via the internet.

Dana was an 'A' student and a star athlete. A tendency to gain weight had always been offset by her very active schedule until a broken leg and arm kept her idle. The result was a large weight gain that humiliated her. Never able to cope with ridicule, Dana sought out amphetamines. Since teen age drug abuse proliferates in our schools, Dana easily acquired her "speed" and the habit that accompanied it. That is how an 'A' student was introduced to teenage drug abuse.

Every Teen is Vulnerable

Dana bought her speed from Alec. Alec had his introduction into teenage drug abuse trying to escape an abusive father. Alec was desperate to run away and chose dealing as a way to finance his plan. Typical of a young dealer, Alec used his own product and the only place Alec was running was in circles and ultimately, jail; another victim of teen age drug abuse.

Carol was a wealthy classmate whose parents gave her the best of everything, except their time. She saw her parents when one or the other returned from a business trip. If they had checked with the girl's governess they would have discovered that Carol regularly smoked pot and had sex with any number of young men.

Hungry for attention and desperate for supervision, Carol soon was pregnant and did coke during her first trimester until her parents finally noticed their daughter was in trouble. Carol became a victim of teen age drug abuse via her parent's indifference and her crippling loneliness.

Teenage drug abuse can visit any home and any family. Teen age drug abuse can pry through a teenagers weak defenses and exploit their pain and confusion.

Teenage Drug Abuse Just the Beginning

Teenage drug abuse is just the beginning. Like Carol, and Alec demonstrate, teen age drug abuse candeliver a teen into a jail cell or force a young girl to think about abortions and adoptions. Teen age drug abuse can turn a teen into a thief and shred the family of sanity and resources.

Often, by the time a parent is aware that their troubled teen is using drugs, problems may have escalated beyond their ability to address them. Seeking out advice from a therapist or school counselor at the first sign of any problem is critical. Enrollment into a troubled teen boarding school or a session at brat camp is often the measures parents must take to save their teen's life.

There are so many resources for teen help that are readily available to troubled teenagers as well as their families. They come in various forms ranging from schools to phone hotlines. These resources have been helping youth of all ages to overcome their dilemmas and to resume happy and fulfilling lives.

If you teenager is in need of assistance, there is a teen help resource that can certainly work for your child's benefit. In fact, a world of opportunity awaits you and your teenager. By pursuing progressive options, you will soon find that your child's situation can be helped.

Teen Help Can Start Your Child Down Progressive Path

If you are uncertain of which progressive direction to take, you can seek the counseling of a trained specialist. This specialist will be able to pinpoint the cause of your child's distress and direct you along the proper path. You and your child do not have to do this alone.

Teen help is widely accessible. If you aren't quite sure how to utilize such help, there are people who can help you. Don't wait any longer to help your child

A troubled teenager shouldn't be left alone. If you don't try to help your troubled teen, you will end up hurting him or her instead. Granted, no parent would ever willingly hurt his or her child. The dangerous thing about troubled teens is that you don't know that you are hurting them when you ignore their problems.

Help Your Troubled Teenager
Not paying attention to your troubled youth is a silent killer that only your teenage child hears. You might think that it is a better idea to leave your child alone, but that is just wrong. You need to take as much action as you can to help your child out of the dark world in which he or she lives.

Your teenager might act like he or she doesn't care about you and your opinions, but that is not the truth. Teenage children are especially proud and have a hard time asking for help. Instead, they ask for it indirectly by misbehaving or abusing drugs and/or alcohol.

Don't take such behavior as an insult. Take it as a cry for help and then help your child. You might consider therapy or counseling for your troubled teenager. You might even consider a little more love and affection. Don't be surprised when you start to see positive results. In most cases, a little help goes a long way.

How did your teenager ever become a troubled teen? Parents are bewildered to find that providing clothes, music, 100 dollar gym shoes, and expensive computers are somehow not sufficient to prevent their adolescent from falling into the troubled teen category.

What are the questions that a parent of a troubled teen needs to ask and who do they turn to for the answers? The first step a parent will want to take in evaluating their trouble teen is to sit down a write a list.

Write Your Teen's Short Story

Better yet, write a 'short story' featuring your troubled teen. You want to describe their behavior, when it began changing and what was the nature of the change. You will want to describe how your troubled teen has performed in school and socially over the years and how that has changed.

You will want to list who your troubled teen is friends with accompanied by any suspicions that you may have about these friends. You will want to note the names of the groups and artists your troubled teen listens to on their Ipod, what video games they are playing, where do they spend their time on the Internet? Has their style of clothing changed? Have they been bugging you for a tattoo or piercing or gotten either without permission?

There are two reasons for this exercise. First, the very act of sitting down and writing about your troubled teen will bring you insights that you hadn't had before. It will help you connect the dots, such as certain behavioral changes that began when a particular new friend arrived on the scene.

Choosing Your Teen's Therapist

Secondly, this "biography" will serve to introduce your troubled teen to the therapist that you ultimately choose. Often times when you are in a new situation - and meeting the therapist or psychologist that you just hired for your troubled teen is definitely a stressful situation - you'll be likely to omit important facts or forget the instincts and intuition that you bring to the analysis.

It is likely that you have already conducted some preliminary research into the type of therapists who specialize in working with a troubled teen. As you narrow down your choices, you will want to list their recommendations on boarding school options for your troubled teen. You will then take their recommendations on various military schools, wilderness therapies, boot camps and troubled teen boarding schools and begin researching those individually.

"Troubled teenagers". Wow, what a phrase. For the parents of troubled teenagers, trouble doesn't even begin to express the half of it. But that is the term that most often describes today's adolescents.

Times Have Changed

Perhaps as a parent you just want to be done with it. You have had enough and you just don't want to hear anymore about troubled teenagers. You make excuses for your troubled teen, shrug off his late nights or surly attitude as adolescent pranks and normal teen angst. If only it were still that simple.

The first thing parents of troubled teenagers have to realize is that times have changed drastically. It was one thing to be a defiant rebel back in the sixties and early seventies. It's an entirely different proposition in this new millennium. In this millennium you can multiply by 200% the power of peer groups and drug culture to influence troubled teenagers.

Let's briefly review 3 critical factors that this generation of troubled teenagers have to contend with that were not present for their parent's generation.

Internet Media and Culture

"The number of teenagers using the internet has grown 24% in the past four years and 87% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 are online."(Pew Report/05) Unlike their parents, troubled teenagers today are exposed to and have access to drug chat rooms, sex chat rooms, gambling sites and virtually any type of video content.

Today strangers have access to your teenager in chat rooms and via email. Compare that to twenty years ago where a huge percentage of troubled teenagers were still limited to three TV broadcast channels and movie rentals. And there was no way a strange man could be chatting to your daughter in her bedroom.

Music, File, and You Tube

Before the introduction of the Walkman in 1979, a teenager hauled around a clumsy boom box. Today, the Ipod serves as an intravenous feed of some of the most caustic and brutalizing music that have ever been penned. On YouTube your teenager can watch sexual escapades, demented hate speech or a tutorial for bomb making.

That is barely skimming the surface of the vast differences between what this generation of troubled teenagers must choose from and the choices confronting prior generations.

A parent once could monitor and control the influence of culture and friends. Today, troubled teenagers are exposed to a constant barrage of destructive influences via the Internet and media, representing such a monumental challenge that parents are often choosing professional help in their fight for their troubled teenagers.

If you are reading this page, you are a few steps ahead of a great many parents of troubled teens. You are out of denial. The country as a whole is coming to understand that if a teen crisis intervention plan or program isn't in place in schools and public institutions that the juggernauts of drug abuse, alcohol abuse and teen sexual exploitation will continue to crush the lives of America's youth.

Substance Abuse Statistics Tell the Tale

Teen crisis intervention is too grandiose a term you say? These statistics suggest teen crisis intervention is a necessary description for ongoing substance abuse among teens.

• Between 1999 and 2000, the rate of past month marijuana use among women aged 12 and older increased from 3.1 percent to 3.5 percent...
• Among youth aged 12 to 17 in 2000, 9.7 percent had used an illicit drug within the 30 days prior to interview
• Approximately 2.1 million youths aged 12 to 17 had used inhalants at some time in their lives as of 2000. This constituted 8.9 percent of youths
• About 9.7 million persons aged 12 to 20 reported drinking alcohol in the month prior to the survey interview in 2000 (27.5 percent of this age group). An estimated 6.6 million (18.7 percent) were binge drinkers and 2.1 million (6.0 percent) were heavy drinkers

Teen Crisis Intervention Comes in Many Forms

As you read these pages, we keep you informed of those public schools, states, towns and non-profits that acknowledge the need for teen crisis intervention by funding teen crisis intervention programs that address the at-risk teen, teens already in the legal system, and pre-teens who might be tempted.

The rise of the Internet only accelerates the need to develop interventions to prevent the at-risk teen from being seduced into dangerous and unsavory situations while right under their parent's roof.

If the dangers to teens ended with substance abuse it might be manageable, but drug abuse brings the subsets of teen pregnancies, rape, imprisonment, AIDS, and prostitution. Teen crisis intervention programs need to be implemented that take account of all of the destructive forces that can be unleashed if left unchecked.

Teen crisis intervention can simply mean that adults take back control of their teen's lives by battling the cultural forces that make drugs seem attractive to the troubled teen. Teen crisis interventions can only occur when parents quit denying a crisis exists.