Troubled Teens Resources

Deborah Dillon is convinced her brother Bill’s pug Buddy - named aptly enough - is the reason he is doing so well. Two years ago, he bought Buddy, but a few months after the dog’s arrival, Dillon’s brother, who has AIDS, became extremely ill. Bill decided he could no longer take care of Buddy and tearfully gave him away.

“My brother did not get out of bed for two weeks. He would not answer the phone, and he wasn’t eating. He gave up,” recalls Dillon. Distraught by her son’s reaction, his mother called the new owner and asked for Buddy back. The woman consented. ‘You’d have thought he had gone to Lourdes (France) to get cured by the holy water,’ said Dillon. ‘If he had not gotten the dog back, who knows what would have happened.’ Bill got out of bed and began to gain back his strength. Today, he and Buddy walk two to three miles a day and his health has improved greatly.

“Buddy gives him something to nurture and care for when he’s usually on the receiving end,” muses Dillon. “It gives him a reason to get up in the morning and a way to meet people. It’s important for my brother to take care of himself, to take his medication, and eat properly, and he does now. Because of Buddy, I worry about my brother a lot less.”
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There are hundreds of stories about the transformational affect pets have on people. Older people, disabled people, and also troubled teens.

One of the ravages of drug addiction is an abbreviated emotional range. Troubled teens hide behind a wall of cynicism and distrust. An animal, such as a dog or a horse, can break through. Combined with therapy, a teen can be led back into the full range of their emotions, healed enough to trust again.

Fortunately many accredited teen boarding schools, wilderness and brat camps have added animal therapies to their menu of programs. Tipton Academy for Boys is one such troubled teen boarding school who can recite success story after success story in the administration of their animal assistance program.

Many parents were exposed to the concept of wilderness therapy through the series of programs and spin offs that go under the heading of “Brat Camp“.

If you have a teen struggling with drugs or alcohol problems, you have probably accumulated quite a list of possible residential treatment programs available at boarding schools, boot camps, and military schools and are well aware of the different therapies and philosophies endorsed and exercised by these varying treatment facilities.

Wilderness therapy differs in methodology and temperament than treatments offered by boot camps, wilderness adventures or the more traditional boarding schools. Wikipedia offers the following explanation of wilderness therapy.

“Wilderness therapy is a form of outdoor education treatment that relies on the natural aspects of a primitive outdoor sojourn. Like adventure therapy and boot camps, wilderness therapy is often used for behavior modification by the families of young people. But the aims and methods of wilderness therapy don’t center on behavior modification. Unlike adventure therapy, wilderness therapy programs avoid what they view as manipulations, contrived activities, psychological games, and contrived consequences (ANASAZI Foundation 1990). And unlike boot camps, they employ no force, confrontation, point or level systems, or other overt behavioral modification techniques or models. They stress assertiveness, open communication between staff and students, and are very group-oriented.

“Wilderness therapy programs trace their origins to outdoor survival programs that placed children in a challenging environment where determination, communication and team efforts were outcomes” (Conner 2005). According to the Director of the Wilderness Therapy Program at Naropa University, “through contemplative practice and the experiential outdoor classroom, students gain further self-awareness and the ability to respond to whatever arises in the moment” (Piranian 2006). And according to the founders of ANASAZI Foundation “we learned that whenever we adopted what we have come to call ‘contrived’ experiences, the overall impact often diminished for the participants” (ANASAZI Foundation 1990).”
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SoberRecovery.com provides an extensive list of wilderness therapy programs currently available.