Predatory behavior runs rampant in Facebook’s addiction support groups

Indigophoton

Indigophoton

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Something to be aware of for anyone who makes use of support groups on Facebook:
Huge groups of vulnerable people looking for help are a rehab marketer’s dream
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When Laurie Couch first joined the Affected by Addiction Support Group, a closed Facebook group with 70,000 members, she felt a sense of belonging. Here were people who understood her struggle to care for a son addicted to drugs, and they were there to support her, any time of the day or night. She began regularly responding to people who were dealing with cravings and comforting parents devastated by their children’s addictions.

Private addiction support groups are abundant on Facebook, and Affected by Addiction is one of the most high-profile. Last June, the group’s owner Matt Mendoza spoke at the Facebook Communities Summit, where Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his plan to get a total of 1 billion people into “meaningful groups.” In July, Zuckerberg posted a glowing review of the support group on his Facebook page. The group was profiled by Good Morning America in February, sparking a flood of new members. In the segment, Mendoza told the hosts that “there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have gotten treatment as a result of this community.” He didn’t expand on the process.

In March, Couch’s son almost overdosed. They live together in rural Kansas, where she doesn’t have access to much in-person support, which is part of what made Affected by Addiction attractive to begin with. In the wake of his near-overdose, she reached out to the group for comfort and encouragement while she panicked and figured out what to do.

Shortly after that, a stranger named Garrett Hall sent Couch a Facebook message.

“Hey Lauri [sic], I saw your name on the Affected By Addiction support group, and I had this weird/strong impulse to just reach out,” Hall wrote to Couch. “[A]re you doing ok?”
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Marketers from the treatment center had to approve every post in the group, which gave them the first opportunity to privately message good candidates for their rehab and try to talk them into going to Windward in California. They needed that edge, Mendoza explained to me a few weeks ago, because they knew a Facebook group that big would be full of other marketers, waiting to swoop in as soon as a juicy message was public.
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It’s not just Affected by Addiction. There are enormous numbers of Facebook groups and pages targeting addicts and their families, and it seems like every one, big or small, is a potential hunting ground for marketers, whether the admins intend for them to be or not.
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Many of the problems in rehab marketing are due to the fact that addiction treatment is largely unregulated. For all that pharmaceutical marketers may skirt regulations, there are clear regulations to follow, many of them federal. But, as Bergman of Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital pointed out to me, addiction wasn’t considered a medical problem until recently, long after patient protection standards were developed.

“Right now, treatment programs can say whatever they want. ‘Our success rates are 85%’ – those things don’t even mean anything,” he said. “For most of these treatment programs, if their goal is to keep patients coming in and be able to make money, it’s probably not in their best interest to measure outcomes over time, you know what I mean?”
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