Seventy deeply troubled teenagers spend weeks, months, even years on a locked psychiatric ward. They’re not just failing in school, not just using drugs. They are out of control—violent or suicidal, in trouble with the law, unpredictable, and dangerous. Their futures are at risk.
Twenty years later, most of them still struggle. But astonishingly, a handful are thriving. They’re off drugs and on the right side of the law. They’ve finished school and hold jobs that matter to them. They have close friends and are responsible, loving parents.
What happened? How did some kids stumble out of the woods while others remain lost? Could their strikingly different futures have been predicted back during their teenage struggles? The kids provide the answers in a series of interviews that began during their hospitalizations and ended years later. Even in the early days, the resilient kids had a grasp of how they contributed to their own troubles. They tried to make sense of their experience and they groped toward an understanding of other people’s inner lives.
In their own impatient voices, Out of the Woods portrays edgy teenagers developing into thoughtful, responsible adults. Listening in on interviews through the years, narratives that are often poignant, sometimes dramatic, frequently funny, we hear the kids growing into more composed—yet always recognizable—versions of their tough and feisty selves.
Stuart T. Hauser is Senior Scientist at the Judge Baker Children’s Center and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Joseph P. Allen is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.
Eve Golden trained in psychiatry and is a writer and independent scholar in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The Puzzle of Resilience
2. High Valley
3. Reading the Stories
4. Pete: Taming My Wildness
5. Rachel: I Started Seeing Things Change
6. Sandy: You Can Work with It
7. Billy: It All Worked out Fairly Well
8. Seeing in the Dark
Notes
References
Index
What People are Saying About This
Resilience has been a puzzle. We have seen it as either the reflection of some positive trait--IQ, say-- or the result of good experiences. This highly engaging book is quite different: it focuses on the processes associated with resilience. Three elements prove to be crucial: personal agency and a concern to overcome adversity; a self-reflective style; and a commitment to relationships. Anyone committed to working with troubled young people will find much food for thought in this splendid book.
Michael Rutter
Resilience has been a puzzle. We have seen it as either the reflection of some positive trait--IQ, say-- or the result of good experiences. This highly engaging book is quite different: it focuses on the processes associated with resilience. Three elements prove to be crucial: personal agency and a concern to overcome adversity; a self-reflective style; and a commitment to relationships. Anyone committed to working with troubled young people will find much food for thought in this splendid book. --(Michael Rutter, author of Helping Troubled Children)
Judith S. Wallerstein
A riveting account of how and why a group of very troubled teenagers were able to turn their lives around as they entered adulthood. The authors' impressive insight into these unexpected changes should bring hope and new understanding to educators and clinicians—and also to worried parents. --(Judith S. Wallerstein, author of What About the Kids? Raising Children Before, During, and After Divorce)
Joanne Greenberg
This is one of the most important books on recovery from teenage mental illness that I have ever seen. Out of the Woods shows powerfully that the question of who succeeds and who fails to recover is a question not for biochemical analysis and drug treatment, but for dedicated therapeutic faith and understanding. The more attention this powerful book gets, the better. --(Joanne Greenberg, author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden)
