Boarding School or Wilderness Therapy for Your Troubled Teen?
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.
Relevant Tags:boarding school, brat camp, drug abuse, military scool, wilderness therapy
