What Is Wilderness Therapy for Troubled Girls from Wallowa, OR?

Wilderness therapy is a form of adventure-based, outdoor-residential therapy used to address underlying mental, emotional, and even spiritual issues that cause self-destructive living habits in troubled girls (including those from Wallowa, OR).

What sets wilderness programs apart from other types of residential treatment is that the entire healing process takes place outdoors in a natural, wild environment - typically, many miles removed from civilization; even hundreds of miles removed from Wallowa, OR.

Does Wilderness Therapy Work? 

Wilderness therapy is defined as a treatment that uses outdoor expeditions as a means of addressing and psychiatrically treating behavioral and mental health issues. Established in the mid-20th century, wilderness therapy has quickly become one of the most popular and most successful forms of troubled teen treatment in America. 

Wilderness therapy has become one of the most popularly used troubled teen treatment methods in America today. As for its ever-rising popularity, experts say it's because of wilderness therapy’s unique approach to treating the behavioral and mental health issues in troubled teens, which are unquestionably successful in rehabilitating the nation’s troubled teenage boys and girls. 

The methodology behind the nation’s most successful wilderness therapy programs is simple: to provide a secure, non-critical, and supportive environment in which troubled teens can achieve ‘self-discovery.’ While engaged, teens in wilderness therapy are able to examine the maladaptive behaviors which led them to their current state, and furthermore, fully realize why they acted on such behaviors in the first place. 

The remote and naturally healing environment of the wilderness then allows teens to reconcile with the reasons why they were sent there, and most importantly, it allows them to work through the underlying issues which caused their ‘out of control behaviors in the first place. This epiphany of self-discovery is the key to most of the most skilled and expert wilderness therapy program’s overwhelming success rate of rehabilitation. 

Further research into why wilderness therapy is successful shows us that its functionality, both that of natural and psychiatrically added, are responsible. You see, challenges that teens face during their time at wilderness therapy are designed to mirror the challenges of the outside world. The only difference between facing challenges simulated in the wilderness is that they are faced in an environment that is void of any negative distractions.