PAVEMENT MAGAZINE - Teen Hermits

TEEN HERMITS Acute Social Withdrawal
Andy photographed by Ned Schenck	"My room is like a cathedral to me -- I feel safer here than I do when I go out there. And I'm not sure if it's really worth returning to school with all the animosity that goes along with it. There's a very real possibility that I may never leave..." - Andy, a teen recluse

Thousands of teens and young adults in America have sealed themselves off from the outside world. In increasing numbers, America's youth have fallen victim to a condition called Acute Social Withdrawal. What happens is that teenagers suddenly lock themselves into their rooms and stay there, sometimes for years at a time. Like other behavioral disorders, this condition is not often discussed openly and largely goes unnoticed by the public. These teenagers don't want anyone to know, and if the parents do try to get help, the kids often threaten to assault them or commit suicide. So their parents keep quiet.

"It isn't all bad, you know. I mean, I guess it can get pretty boring sometimes, but at other times it's kinda like a spiritual experience," says Andy, a 17 year old boy who hasn't left his bedroom in over eight months. "My room is like a cathedral to me -- I feel safer here than I do when I go out there. And I'm not sure if it's really worth returning to school with all the animosity that goes along with it. There's a very real possibility that I may never leave..."

Acute Social Withdrawal is one of the most perplexing mysteries in child psychology today. Young sufferers of Acute Social Withdrawal are usually male, grow up in an affluent family, generally tend to be attractive and perform above-average in school, and seem to have everything they could want. Yet many of them just can't cope. No one is entirely sure of the scale of the problem. In a government study published in 2002, Acute Social Withdrawal was defined as "a complete withdrawal from society by an individual for more than six months." According to the study, 5,243 domestic cases have been reported in the previous 12 months, 65 per cent of them young people between 16 and 20.

Although the reported cases of Acute Social Withdrawal have increased dramatically in the U.S. in recent years, it is not nearly as commonplace as in Japan, where up to a million young people (approximately 6% of the teenage population and 12% of the male teen population) have dropped out of society and are refusing to leave their bedrooms. One psychologist has described the condition as an epidemic among Japanese young people in their teens and early twenties. The trigger is usually an event at school, such as bullying, an exam failure or a broken romance.

"America is at risk of becoming an Acute Social Withdrawal nation - inward-looking and very cold to outsiders," says Jerry Koepp, a volunteer youth director in an Orlando-based rehabilitation program sponsored by the American Health Association (AHA). "It is simply a consequence of a social system that has collapsed. As more and more of our young people refuse to assimilate into mainstream culture and reject our core values, the more likely we are to follow in Japan's footsteps. I think the number of Acute Social Withdrawal will increase exponentially in the years ahead."

Medical experts disagree on the root cause of Acute Social Withdrawal, and debate continues as to whether this is truly a medical condition or simply a social phenomenon. Case studies of Acute Social Withdrawal typically exhibit a combination of clinical symptoms including agrophobia, persecution complexes, insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorders and regressive behavior. In Andy's case, a psychiatrist who examined him says "Andy is a melting pot of psychoses, he's like a page ripped from the chapter on schizophrenia in the DSM [Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association]."

While specific causes and symptoms remain unclear, Acute Social Withdrawal has been deemed a 'disease of affluence' because poorer families do not have the financial resources to support long-term recluses.

"Is there something about the suburban environment itself that is contributing to this problem?" asks Koepp. "An overlooked factor is that, for many of our youth, American life is terribly boring. Even for those with access to money and transportation, there's simply nothing to do and nowhere to go. Family life is even worse, filled with unconcerned parents who can't communicate with their children or refuse to confront them about their apathy. Consider this -- you have all these kids who are constantly tormented on a daily basis at school, or don't want to lose face in social situations. Even if they try, they just can't seem to identify with popular culture and are forced to endure mundane academic courses where they aren't sufficiently challenged or engaged. And so, for many, the path of least resistance is to stay locked in their bedroom."

In the international media, teenage hermits have been characterized as violent sociopaths who pose a security risk to their community. This stereotype results primarily from widespread news accounts after a reclusive 17-year-old boy hijacked a bus brandishing a knife near Hiroshima and held the driver and 10 passengers hostage for 19 hours, killing a passenger before finally being apprehended. Violent cases, however, are rare, as young people afflicted with Acute Social Withdrawal are much more likely to suffer from lethargy or suicidal depression than homicidal or violent tendencies, according to counselors.

In Andy's case, it was simply an inability to relate to other boys in his class that led to this voluntary isolation. He was constantly teased because he liked to hang around with girls during lunch break. He thinks boys are stupid, idle, immature and only interested in sports. "I hate all that shit," he says. "What's the point of a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball? It seems exactly the opposite, it's pointless..." He'd much prefer to spend his time with the girls, who he says "talk about much more interesting stuff and are more fun to hang around." And the girls, for the most part, seemed to like spending time with Andy.

But there is always a price to pay for social disobedience. Other boys constantly teased him and called him 'one of the girls,' or sissy, or wimp, or fag. Then one day after gym class, several boys dragged him into the back of the locker room and held him in a choke hold while the other boys stripped off his shorts and played 'keep-away.' When the gym teacher finally intervened to break up the commotion, he blamed Andy for disrupting the class and forced him to stay after class in detention.

"I mean, c'mon, I'm standing there naked in front of the entire class getting lectured for not being a team player -- it was humiliating," says Andy. "I don't ever want to endure anything like that again. It sucked..."

The next morning, Andy's mother tried to convince him to go back to school, but she hasn't seen him once in eight months. She flips through a family photo album, slowly turning page after page of what appears to be a typical normal boy -- Andy buried in sand at the beach, blowing out candles at a birthday party, dressing up for Halloween -- always smiling at the camera. The last page in the album is a single picture of Andy's locked door, with a menacing piece of notebook paper scribbled with a Sharpie marker stapled to the door: "KEEP OUT OR DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS."