At 4 a.m., you are woken up by two burly men who tell you they are taking you away. They do not say who they are or where you are going. You yell for your parents, but no one else is home. 

Before you know it, you are in the back of an SUV, unable to escape, being driven across the country without knowing what fate awaits you. 

What sounds like the beginning of a thriller is a cold reality for many mentally ill and addicted teens. When a minor’s caregivers want to put them in treatment but suspect they are unwilling to go, they can hire the help of euphemistically-named “youth transportation services.”

Truth be told, these services offer kidnappers-for-hire who transport teens to treatment facilities.

One may think such an industry would be highly regulated, but these traffickers can employ intimidation, coercion and force to make minors comply. With such traumatizing practices involved in the process, involuntary youth transportation should be banned by the state and federal governments to mitigate harm to already vulnerable teens. 

Foremost among concerns about IYT is its impact on minors. Between 14% and 59% of teens with PTSD develop a substance abuse disorder, while over three-quarters of chronically depressed adults report instances of significant childhood trauma.

Given the prevalence of trauma among drug-using and depressed people, there is a high risk of IYT practices re-traumatizing adolescents they are tasked with moving. Not only can this jeopardize the effectiveness of subsequent treatment, but it can also strain already fraught child-caregiver relations. 

None of this is to mention the implications of treating the mentally ill like criminals, restraining them and locking them in the backseats of cars. 

However, regardless of such implications, the reports from teens subjected to IYT speak for themselves. Some teens describe feelings of fear, confusion, betrayal and resentment during and after their kidnappings. 

That said, not every minor who undergoes IYT finds the experience harmful — in fact, some find it is beneficial to their mental health. Still, the potential for exacerbating mental duress far outweighs any benefits provided by such harsh interventions. 

This all begs the question: What is the alternative to IYT? How can we better support troubled minors?

For starters, we must recognize willingness to receive treatment directly affects the positivity of treatment outcomes. As such, voluntary family therapy is a much better way for caregivers to express concerns about mental health to their children without shipping them cross-country. 

Alternatively, while it is typically sufficient for caregivers to just sign off on IYT, the law ought to require at least two third-party psychologists or psychiatrists to approve its use as well. Professionals better understand the impacts of IYT and can more objectively determine whether kidnapping is necessary to treat a patient.

Increasing rates of youth depression and the two-thirds of depressed teens who forgo treatment in our nation make it all the more urgent to reevaluate the efficacy and ethicality of therapeutic interventions like IYT. Acknowledging the harms of IYT and potential alternatives, surely we can find a better solution than kidnapping to aid the flagging mental health of young Americans. 

Jude is a senior in LAS.

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