Hello all! I'm writing a book which is a collection of first-hand accounts from Wilderness Therapy. I'm spreading the secrets of Wilderness Therapy like wildfire to the world. Share your story here, and I will anonymously add it to my book. (I will omit any names or details that are identifying) I will DM every one of you when it's published! Make your voices heard, let this book be the reason the proper actions are taken. Let this post be your voice!
Disclaimer: Commenting your story gives me the assumption that I can put it in my book, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED.
EDIT: You guys this is amazing thank y’all for supporting this project!
In late april of last year i was signed up for, and gooned to Open sky wilderness therapy in Utah/Denver. Previous to my arrival i was a pretty horrible drug addict. like most drug addicts i was in denial of my issue and the “experimenting” i was doing was no longer occasional. Since i was and still am a minor i was living under my parents roof. my addiction became hard to hide when my now ex girlfriend totaled her car in a bad accident, after spending the entire night with me car hopping, taking xanax, drinking, and coke. we had both had drinking and xanax issues for a while and situations like these were normal. When my gf was in the hospital obviously my parents found out and around a months later the day went to wilderness rolled around.
As expected i freaked the fuck out and my first weeks were miserable, didn’t obey anyone and rebelled. i never attempted to run though, because i had heard about wilderness programs before and knew it wouldn’t work. I guess most wilderness therapy’s focus on spirituality and weird hippie shit, but this place took it pretty far tbh. lot of the practices are just stolen from native american culture ig. we would have our “expositions” for like 5 days out of the week where we would hike all around utah and colorado and set up camp. everything we owned we had to tied up in a tarp with seatbelts and wear as a backpack during multi mile, high elevation hikes. The other days of the week we would be on “base” where we just worked around the place and did chores. we showered by pouring home depot buckets of water on ourselves. as time went on obviously i adapted and wasnt pouting around, i committed whether it made me hate my life or not. The hikes and lack of food were the only things that would break me, wearing a big ass bag hiking up a mountain in the dumping rain isn’t fun. the amount of times i ate shit and was forced to just continue hiking if i destroyed my ankle. when we would arrive at camp after hiking all day we’d set up shelter with a tarp and rocks and then prepared to cook all organic dinner for the entire team ( around 10 boys and 3 guides). We we’re also issued our “personal food” which is just shitty peanut butter and oats and random things. when this food would rot, we were sometimes forced to eat it anyway in order to get any new food at ALL. I felt hungry 2/3 that entire experience.
Although this entire thing has just been me shitting on it, i realized while i was there i was way happier than i was
... keep reading on reddit ➡My friend was sent to wilderness roughly 2 months back. Before leaving, they gave me 3 indicators as to where they were being sent.
- it’s in Utah near the Colorado border
- it’s in a desert
- the duration is 9-12 weeks
My first guess was that it was open sky. Do you guys have any ideas?
The Supreme Court of Utah has issued a major ruling in the case of Jacob M. SCOTT v. WINGATE WILDERNESS THERAPY, LLC. In its November ruling, the court expanded the reach of the Utah Health Care Malpractice Act to include injuries that "relat[e] to or aris[e] out of health care rendered ... by [a] health care provider."
This ruling means that anyone injured in an OBH program, TBS or other such program is bound by the act and its statue of limitations.
I (26f) was asked to work at this Wilderness Therapy program. As a person with late diagnosed ADHD, skin picking, and anxiety myself, this program looked to be an employment that I would not feel out of place with my own diagnoses, would get to be outside, it offers certifications for free that cost over 2 grand on one's own, and not only that I was told I would be able to help kids like me learn and discover themselves. And all I would need to do is dedicate at least a year of my time. It seems just about too good to be true, so I started really researching the company. But I haven't found much.
On google it had very high reviews and testimonies, but what stopped me was the few that came from former people in it. They were terrible! Then I started to actually notice that the high reviews are from parents and very little are from anyone who volunteered or was actually forced to go through it.
So essentially I have been down the rabbit hole on the wilderness therapy industry as a whole, which led me to this sub. My parents say its great and kids will say anything, but I know that is not true.
But in the last 24 hours it seems that working in such a place is a devil's bargain. Great benefits and all this stuff, but at the price of your soul to watch kids suffer. I wasn't even asked to do a background check, or fingerprints, or anything I am certain a place that has full control of underage people (who can't go anywhere else) would want before hiring a complete stranger.
And I have a very genuine question for anyone who went to this one specifically (and you do not have to give any details if it is upsetting to do), was it really that bad? Anyone here ever work there and see firsthand?
I worked with troubled youth ages 13-17 with various reasons for admittance. Our program entailed a 3 month(ish) stay in the Utah desert.
Here is a link to all of Dr Reedy's YT videos. He forgot to turn off comments. Let's tell viewers what Dr Reedy is about and how his program (as well as programs like this) damages teens.
Since YT no longer posts the number of downvotes, the only way to effectively downvote a video is to post critical comments.
Here is a link to all of Dr Reedy's videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/bradreedy/videos
Links to Dr Reedy's videos that are about Wilderness and the Troubled Teen Industry
Introduction to Wilderness Therapy
Grit, Resilience and the Effect of Wilderness Therapy
Stay Connected to your Child While in an Out Of Home Placement
How to Choose the Best Fit Aftercare Webinar
Emotional and Physical Safety in Wilderness -- this is a good place to tell a horror story, particularly if you went to SN or Evoke.
How Wilderness Therapy Works-- a good place to share how Wilderness Therapy does not work
The Role of the Field Instructor--these people are generally poorly paid, poorly trained. A good place to talk about bad field instructors
Adjusting to Out of Home Placement
The Importance of Good Nutrition and Mindfulness Meditation in Wilderness--a good place to gripe about Rice and Beans, not getting enough food, starvation, etc.
Remember to give ALL of Dr Reedy's videos a THUMBS DOWN and, on videos about the Troubled Teen Industry, let others know what a c
... keep reading on reddit ➡Most of these 93 projects have not yet been added to the biblio, but it turns out, quite a few schools drank the TTI Kool-Aid
https://preview.redd.it/u23nfwcno8581.png?width=1190&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb207e240063db679f60dc3d67631bc43200b9c7
I've been doing some research about wilderness therapy programs (out of curiosity -- I just learned about this through Tiktok a month ago). I've read a lot of comments and threads in this group on it, but most seem to be based on U.S. programs. I'm Canadian, and found a few Canada-based companies such as Terracentric Adventures and Outward Bound. Are they as bad as in the U.S.? Are teens getting forcibly kidnapped to take part in these programs in Canada like in the U.S.? I'd love to chat with anyone who attended a Canada-based program to learn more about what it was like.
I dont know... I'm just starting to unpack it. I dont know how to feel about it. I was completely oblivious to the fact that it was conversion therapy, and I still can't really accept that it was. I thought that because I wasnt shocked or threatened or tortured that it wasnt conversion therapy.
I basically just went through with everything that my therapist wanted me to do. I was totally oblivious and didnt know what was going on because the program didnt specialize in that. Everyone else in the group was a straight cis guy except for one bi kid. A trans guy showed up to the group later on but aged out of the program and left. I was there for 100 days, and actually asked to stay longer. I loves working with my therapist and enthusiastically completed every assignment that he wanted me to do.
By the end of it he kind of changed his mind on trans people, or at least me specifically. I think that because I was so willing to undergo treatment, reas Iron John and every other book he gave me, and STILL ended up being a girl that he realized it's just the way that I am. The second time I was sent to that program he refused to have me placed in his boys group and told my treatment team that I should be placed with the girls. But idk I cant believe that's what was going on.
He would push me towards being a gnc man, try to help me get in touch with my masculinity, insist to me and my parents that I shouldnt go on HRT or blockers because "testosterone is what gives you creativity and drive". I already remembered a comment he told me during a session about how the nature of the penis is to be aggressive and the nature of the womb is to be filled. I just remembered about 15 minutes ago that he encouraged me to masturbate to be more comfortable with my body.
I might make a post about this more later but I dont know what to do. I was 16. I trusted him and I trusted my family and treatment team were trying to help me. What the fuck. Why am I so fucking autistic that the people around me had to tell me that yes, it's definitely conversion therapy, and that what happened to me would be illegal if gender conversion therapy was illigal in Georgia.
Writing a book that compiles hundreds of different stories of people who were sent to Wilderness Therapy. I’m trying to EXPOSE Wilderness Therapy for the pain those programs have caused people. Tell your stories here and it will be anonymously put in my book! I’ll DM all of you when it’s published!
Disclaimer: Telling your story here gives me the assumption you’re okay with me putting it in my book, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
On troubled teen industry wilderness therapy programs, what would be the average number of prisoners in each group and how many guards would they usually send along to guard them? What would they usually do if one or more of the prisoners escaped? Do the guards ever hit the prisoners if they don't think they are moving fast enough? Do the guards carry weapons?
Just found out that in the US it’s legal for parents to forcibly send their children on wilderness survival retreats - it’s called getting “gooned”. A lot of the times the children are forcibly taken and aren’t aware of where they are going. Just wondering if perhaps Gretchen will use this to somehow evade legal reprecussions - perhaps convincing authorities that the parents agreed to having their children experience this or something along those lines. I just thought it was really interesting that something similar to this experiment she’s running is actually legal.
I went to a wilderness therapy for 12 weeks, and I'm living at a TBS now. I have almost constant nightmares about wilderness, I suffer from paranoia attacks frequently, something I never experienced before. Anyways, I'd be happy to answer any questions however it may take me some time to respond as if I get caught saying things about what I've experienced here because I could get in a lot of trouble.
Fuck ok I really really don’t want to write this shit down but it needs to be known. I, and many others, were abused at BlueFire. I was there from fall of 2020 to February 2021. Im extremely nervous to put any more information out in case of being recognized.
An incomplete list (because I can possibly remember them all):
I broke a bone and was left untreated for 4 days before being taken to a hospital. They tried to convince me I was making it up for attention, but once my skin started turning black and purple I realized I wasn’t making anything up. We were forced SO MANY (2 dozen plus times) times to sit in the snow without fire or shelter for countless hours in silence. This was a “consequence” for “misbehaving”. I was not allowed contact with any family for the first six weeks as punishment because of the panic attacks and hysteria I had my first week. We were made to force-feed eachother TO LITERALLY DEMONSTRATE WHAT ABUSE WAS LIKE. We had to backpack one day with our legs tied together to represent how being depressed keeps you away from being free. We were told several times to shut up because we were the ones in crazy camp and we didn’t deserve to be listened to. I was told my dog died then told she didn’t to test how I reacted to grief even if it wasn’t real. That one just makes me mad. We weren’t allowed to talk to eachother at all unless we were being watched and recorded by staff. We had to walk barefoot in several feet of snow to use the “bathroom” (any bush) Our shoes/socks were taken away at night. This was so it would make it harder to run away. We had to do layouts in our under garments in below freezing temperatures while it was raining.
I can’t make myself write anymore. My legs are literally shaking right now. If you have questions, relate, whatever do ask away.
Thank you for reading.
By what I have heard and read about this it reminds me of the Elan school.
I first heard about this from the hashtag, on tiktok. #iseeyousurviver
This needs to be talked about more!! Because there is a lot of horrible schools/camps like this. That kids to this day are still being sent there.
So yeah i'd been living in the woods for exactly 3 months and i'm now at a residential program to deal with my mental health. If anyone wants to talk and be friends then that would be cool. Im feeling overwhelmed and i need someone to ask me questions so that i can vent.
I am a researcher in Australia working on and in adventure therapy for young people with complex trauma. There is a LOT of literature about wilderness therapy (WT) and NONE of it describes practices inside. I am looking to find out what is going on behind, and left out of, the WT literature. Some of the WT practices are illegal over here and yet I am writing practice guidelines for professionals internationally. I could really use some help understanding what is going on.
I have recieved Moderator approval to ask these questions btw.
Apologies for any triggers in this. It is not my intention to deny stories or to support WT.
Transporting/being gooned and RTC’s are outside my research scope and are being addressed by others. Specifically, I am looking behind the OBHC (https://obhcouncil.com/) wilderness research.
Please tell me about professional practice in Wilderness Therapy, particularly since 2014 when OBHC stated that things needed to change. Have these organisations changed? The OBHC member programs are listed here: http://obhcouncil.com/members/
In recent years have people been 'tarped', had their shoes removed at night, had to call their names when toileting out of sight, read accountability letters to their group, doing levels, had gender preferences denied, been refused medical care, been restrained etc??? Most of this is not described in the academic literature. There will be other things not listed…we just don’t know what is happening to people.
Also please tell me what worked. If WT stopped doing this stuff there may be some benefit. So pointers of what was useful would be good as well.
Am happy to chat but am on the other side of the world so I may not be able to respond immediately.
Looking for info on what Wilderness therapy is and how I can get involved in it (what schools, programs, etc.) I’m based in Ohio, but willing to relocate. Thanks!
I had no idea where I was going until my mom (in tears) dropped me off and drove away. I spent 59 days in the Utah desert hiking around with other teenage girls without ever knowing when I'd be able to leave. The only time I stepped foot indoors was at the doctor's office after getting a toe infection.
This was ten years ago. I look back on it now as a generally positive experience.
In late april of last year i was signed up for, and gooned to Open sky wilderness therapy in Utah/Denver. Previous to my arrival i was a pretty horrible drug addict. like most drug addicts i was in denial of my issue and the “experimenting” i was doing was no longer occasional. Since i was and still am a minor i was living under my parents roof. my addiction became hard to hide when my now ex girlfriend totaled her car in a bad accident, after spending the entire night with me car hopping, taking xanax, drinking, and coke. we had both had drinking and xanax issues for a while and situations like these were normal. When my gf was in the hospital obviously my parents found out and around a months later the day went to wilderness rolled around.
As expected i freaked the fuck out and my first weeks were miserable, didn’t obey anyone and rebelled. i never attempted to run though, because i had heard about wilderness programs before and knew it wouldn’t work. I guess most wilderness therapy’s focus on spirituality and weird hippie shit, but this place took it pretty far tbh. lot of the practices are just stolen from native american culture ig. we would have our “expositions” for like 5 days out of the week where we would hike all around utah and colorado and set up camp. everything we owned we had to tied up in a tarp with seatbelts and wear as a backpack during multi mile, high elevation hikes. The other days of the week we would be on “base” where we just worked around the place and did chores. we showered by pouring home depot buckets of water on ourselves. as time went on obviously i adapted and wasnt pouting around, i committed whether it made me hate my life or not. The hikes and lack of food were the only things that would break me, wearing a big ass bag hiking up a mountain in the dumping rain isn’t fun. the amount of times i ate shit and was forced to just continue hiking if i destroyed my ankle. when we would arrive at camp after hiking all day we’d set up shelter with a tarp and rocks and then prepared to cook all organic dinner for the entire team ( around 10 boys and 3 guides). We we’re also issued our “personal food” which is just shitty peanut butter and oats and random things. when this food would rot, we were sometimes forced to eat it anyway in order to get any new food at ALL. I felt hungry 2/3 that entire experience.
Although this entire thing has just been me shitting on it, i realized while i was there i was way happier than i was
... keep reading on reddit ➡