Troubled teen industry

The troubled teen industry (also known as TTI) is a broad range of youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers. The term encompasses various facilities and programs, including youth residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, and therapeutic boarding schools.

These programs claim to rehabilitate and teach troubled teenagers through various practices. Troubled teen facilities are privately run, and the troubled teen industry constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry. Programs accept youth across a wide range of needs and circumstances, including those experiencing substance abuse, mental illness, emotional dysregulation, and learning disabilities, as well as adolescents targeted for school refusal, academic failure, LGBTQ+ identity, family conflict. Young people may be labeled as "troubled teens", delinquents, or other language on their websites and other advertising materials. Sometimes, these therapies are used as a punishment for contravening family expectations.

The troubled teen industry has encountered many scandals due to child abuse, institutional corruption, and deaths, and is highly controversial. Many critics of these facilities point to a lack of local, state, and federal laws in the United States and elsewhere governing them. Some countries and territories, such as Bermuda, have been known to send teenagers to programs located in the United States.