Wilderness Therapy

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Pages: 5

In the academic journal article, Wilderness Therapy as a Treatment Modality for At-Risk Youth: A Primer for Mental Health Counselors, the author, Nicole Hill, engaged into the outlook of adolescent at risk youth while they are doing Wilderness Therapy Programs or as Ruddell & Thomas like to call them, Wilderness Experience Programs. The author, Hill, discusses how wilderness therapy can be used as a treatment for the youth that are having trouble finding the therapeutic factors to help the at risk youth become more engaged in life it self. Hill, believes that many mental health counselors identify adolescent clients as the most “difficult” clients with which to work because it is a challenge to engage them in the counseling experience (Church, …show more content…
The focus is on solutions and success rather than on the problems (Hill, 2007). The therapeutic goal of programs is to promote feelings of empowerment, responsibility, confidence, and group cohesion within participants (Rosol, 2000). The tone of the article is very affirmative yet flowing throughout the entire text. Hill makes it very easy to read due to all of the evidence that was found through looking closer into the references. It was stated before that Ruddell & Thomas had mentioned Hill in the text which makes Hill a very strong source to feel comfortable of the references chosen. Hill took a lot of time researching about Wilderness therapy due to all of the resources with titles having Wilderness therapy in them. Some of the resources are Bandoroff, Scherer, Bedard, Davis-Berman, Rosol, and so many …show more content…
She continues on discussing more about the therapy program and how she has four fundamental components that help with the therapy. Those four fundamental components are pr-trip planning, trip implementation, post-trip debriefing, and aftercare (Davis-Berman & Berman, 1994). Hill describes the pretrip planning as an orientation as well as medical examinations varying all the way to psych evals. Informing the group of what the next few day and weeks will intel and making sure all information is available to them if anyone needs assistance or the crew helping can help in anyway. Last setting goals for the next few days to come is also key because there always needs to be something for them to look forward too. If the individuals didn’t have anything to look forward to then many would quit. Implementation depends on the goals that are set which sequencing, or ordering, is an adventure-based counseling technique that ensures that group activities and experiences are appropriate for the group's needs and objectives (Schoel et al., 1988). With post-trip debriefing it is towards the end focusing on what they have learned and will continue working on as they are released to go home. Discusssion of how to maintain postitive changes in the adolescent and in the family is paramount at this time