Out of the woods

the long version

"Seventy deeply troubled teenagers spend weeks, months, even years on a locked ward at a psychiatric hospital. They're not just failing in school, not just using drugs. They're out of control - violent or suicidal, in trouble with the law, unpredictable and dangerous. Everyone fears for their future." "Twenty years later, most of them still struggle. But astonishingly, a handful are thriving. They're off drugs. They're on the right side of the law. They've finished school and found (and kept) jobs that matter to them. They have formed lasting friendships and are responsible and loving parents. What happened? How did some kids find their way out of the woods in which others are still lost? Could their strikingly different futures have been predicted back when all of them were having such a hard time?" "The kids give us the answers themselves, in a series of interviews that began during their hospitalizations and ended many years later, when they were adults. A few characteristics separated the resilient ones from those who remain lost. The resilient kids had some sense of what they themselves did to contribute to their troubles, even in their first weeks at the hospital. More than the others, they tried to make sense of their own experience, and they groped toward an understanding of other people's inner lives as well."--Jacket.