So a psych ward for kids but outdoors. What an incredible amount of privilege to go through that, see/hear so many victims of abuse and trauma at these places and turn around and say well it was really helpful for me personally! Then to become complicit in it as an adult yet in the same breath say they are unethical? You cannot reform these places that are literally modelled after prisons and psych wards. What a disappointing read.
Involuntary “treatment” is abuse. Like the author, I went through a wilderness “therapy” program. I still have nightmares about it several years later.
These programs are for-profit and designed to do just that, make a profit. They’re back by little or no evidence. Rather, studies are being done and are concluding that being kidnapped and taken into the woods is absolutely traumatic and unethical.
Let’s not promote this troubled industry. Let’s rise up against it. Thousands of voices of thousands of survivors who went to programs like this one are calling for a shake down. And people are listening. While this author ignores their cries.
I've actually tried seeking a program like this as a 25 year old but everything I could find is for parents of teens. I just want to go have a few months of therapy in the woods and build life skills. I think a voluntary option for adults is something needed. I just wish it wasn't the for-profit nightmare industry that it seems to be.
So a psych ward for kids but outdoors. What an incredible amount of privilege to go through that, see/hear so many victims of abuse and trauma at these places and turn around and say well it was really helpful for me personally! Then to become complicit in it as an adult yet in the same breath say they are unethical? You cannot reform these places that are literally modelled after prisons and psych wards. What a disappointing read.
Involuntary “treatment” is abuse. Like the author, I went through a wilderness “therapy” program. I still have nightmares about it several years later.
These programs are for-profit and designed to do just that, make a profit. They’re back by little or no evidence. Rather, studies are being done and are concluding that being kidnapped and taken into the woods is absolutely traumatic and unethical.
Let’s not promote this troubled industry. Let’s rise up against it. Thousands of voices of thousands of survivors who went to programs like this one are calling for a shake down. And people are listening. While this author ignores their cries.
I've actually tried seeking a program like this as a 25 year old but everything I could find is for parents of teens. I just want to go have a few months of therapy in the woods and build life skills. I think a voluntary option for adults is something needed. I just wish it wasn't the for-profit nightmare industry that it seems to be.
child abuse, pure and simple
Great essay