Out of the Woods Tales of Resilient Teens [Paperback]

Seventy deeply troubled teenagers spend weeks, months, even years on a locked psychiatric ward. Theyre not just failing in school, not just using drugs. They are out of controlviolent 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. Theyre off drugs and on the right side of the law. Theyve 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 peoples inner lives.

In their own impatient voices,Out of the Woodsportrays 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 composedyet always recognizableversions of their tough and feisty selves.

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 cliniciansand also to worried parents.This is one of the most important books on recovery from teenage mental illness that I have ever seen.Out of the Woodsshows powerfully that the question of who succeeds and who fails to recover is a question not for biochemical analysis and drug treatment, blãq