Adolescent Girls and Wilderness Therapy: Can They Handle It?
The title of this blog was a tough one for me to type. My internal answer to the question is always a bold and resounding, “YES, of course, and why is that even a question?” But it is a question and a concern that I have heard from many parents contemplating Wilderness Therapy for their adolescent daughters over the past few years. After consulting with adolescent boys Wilderness Therapists, my suspicion about this gender stereotype was confirmed. It seems that the boy's groups get very few (if any) questions about their capacity to “handle it”.
I have worked as a Wilderness Therapist for over 18 years. I have seen Wilderness Therapy grow from a “boot camp” model, primarily working with conduct disorder types of problems, to a clinically sophisticated model that incorporates individualized approaches for clients with a myriad of problems, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse/dependence, history of trauma, emotional dysregulation, social difficulties, academic failure, school avoidance, and others.