Kids must learn survival skills, self-reliance and pioneer their own self worth. They've been to lock-down, drug therapy, suicide wards, psych wards, intensive individual or family counseling. They've flunked out of traditional programs and have been plunked down in the middle of the wilds in a last ditch effort to get healed. But a good wilderness therapy program doesn't just fix broken kids. At Aspen, parents aren't held blameless.
Good programs require parents back home to undergo therapy.
They provide workbooks to learn better communication tools and they teach moms and dads better ways to deal with the buttons their teenagers push. The Basics Upon arrival at Aspen, teens receive a physical and psychological evaluation and get assigned a therapist who will visit them twice a week in the field. Then it's time to ship out to a group already in progress. It's the instructors, the wilderness guides, who are in the field on a daily basis with teens, and it's this relationship that kids benefit from the most. Teens live and work with a group of eight peers and two instructors who rotate in weekly shifts.