TEEN HERMITS
"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..."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.
"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