Maia Szalavitz | |
|---|---|
 Szalavitz in October 2020 | |
| Born | March 29, 1965 Vinita, Oklahoma |
| 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's 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 genetic, biological, neurological or environmental origin. The traditional medical model of disease requires only an abnormal condition causing distress, discomfort or dysfunction to an affected individual. The contemporary medical model partly attributes addiction to changes in the brain's mesolimbic pathway. The model also considers these diseases as a result of other biological, psychological or sociological entities, despite an incomplete understanding of their mechanisms. The common biomolecular mechanisms underlying addiction – CREB and ΔFosB – were reviewed by Eric J. Nestler in a 2013 review. Genetics and mental disorders may precipitate the severity of a drug addiction. It is estimated that 50% of healthy individuals developing an addiction can trace the cause to genetic factors.
Synanon, originally known as Tender Loving Care, was 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.
Intervention is an American documentary series that premiered on March 6, 2005, on A&E. It follows one or two participants, who are dependent on or addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. They are documented in anticipation of an intervention meeting by family or friends. During the intervention meeting, loved ones give the addict an ultimatum: go to an inpatient drug rehabilitation program immediately, or else risk losing contact, income, or other privileges. The show follows up on the recovery progress for future episodes or for web shorts.
Substance dependence, also known as drug dependence, is a biopsychological situation whereby an individual's functionality is dependent on the necessitated re-consumption of a psychoactive substance because of an adaptive state that has developed within the individual from psychoactive substance consumption that results in the experience of withdrawal and that necessitates the re-consumption of the drug. A drug addiction, a distinct concept from substance dependence, is defined as compulsive, out-of-control drug use, despite negative consequences. An addictive drug is a drug which is both rewarding and reinforcing. ΔFosB, a gene transcription factor, is now known to be a critical component and common factor in the development of virtually all forms of behavioral and drug addictions, but not dependence.
Tough love is the act of treating a person sternly or harshly with the intent to help them in the long run. People exhibit and act upon tough love when attempting to address someone else’s undesirable behaviour. Tough love can be used in many scenarios such as when parenting, teaching, rehabilitating, self-improving or simply when making a decision. Tough love is usually seen as positive due to its encouragement of growth, boundaries, resilience and independence.
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 is 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 an abusive behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school located in Poland, 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 multiple reports of abuse, many from former students, dating back to its opening in 1970.
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.
Heroin-assisted treatment (HAT), or diamorphine-assisted treatment, refers to a type of Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) where semi-synthetic heroin is prescribed to opiate addicts who do not benefit from, or cannot tolerate, treatment with one of the established drugs used in opiate replacement therapy such as methadone or buprenorphine. For this group of patients, heroin-assisted treatment has proven superior in improving their social and health situation. Heroin-assisted treatment is fully a part of the national health system in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and Denmark. Additional trials are being carried out in the United Kingdom, Norway, and Belgium.
Daytop, or Daytop Village, or “Daytop Village New Jersey Inc.” is a drug addiction treatment organization with facilities in New York City and New Jersey. 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 other drug rehabilitation program until Daytop Village opened. Daytop also included a juvenile program based in Mendham, New Jersey. The Mendham, New Jersey facility also included a school for juveniles called Daytop School.
About 1 in 7 Americans reportedly suffered from active addiction to a particular substance. Addiction can cause physical, emotional and psychological harm to those 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."
Charles P. O'Brien is a research scientist, medical educator and a leading expert in the science and treatment of addiction. He is board certified in neurology, psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He is currently the Kenneth E. Appel Professor of Psychiatry, and vice chair of psychiatry, in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Richard Elovich is a social psychologist, writer, performance artist, and AIDS activist focusing on harm reduction and low-threshold approaches to drug treatment.
Joseph R. Volpicelli is an American psychiatrist, research scientist, medical academic, and expert in the treatment of addictive disorders. He is professor emeritus, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board certified in neurology, psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He currently is 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.
Tracey Helton Mitchell is an American public health worker and author. In her teens and twenties she struggled with opioid use disorder and appeared in the documentary Black Tar Heroin. Mitchell stopped using drugs at the age of 28. As of 2017 she managed a public health program in San Francisco. In 2016 she published a memoir, The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin.
The National Harm Reduction Coalition, previously known as the Harm Reduction Coalition, is an American advocacy organization for people who use drugs.
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