XOJane has an article about the lessons learned in wilderness programs

On the webpage of XOJane - a website where women go when they are being selfish, and where their selfishness is applauded - Julia Beatty tells her story about the lessons learned from a stay in wilderness therapy program in Montana when she was a young teenager.

Now years later she had time to reflect about the lessons learned. Her statement is that there are few lessons to take back into real life. The evaluation she received before entering the program failed to set a goal with her stay at the program. As result the stay in the program did only bring a time-out for her and her family.

It is an important lesson she gives to parents to a teenager suffering from emotional problems during the rite of passage towards adulthood.

Without a proper examination of the teenager before making the decision to send the teenager it is almost certain that the program would not benefit the teenager but rather make the rebellion harder.

Parents also have to take into consideration that most educational consultants and even employees of some of the wilderness program receive money from advising and referring clients to residential treatment programs or special boarding schools. Can they as parents be sure that they are given advices which are in the best interest of the teenager?

In no way!! Money is always more important than anything else. Most such special schools are run for profit. Living as an educational consultant is of course for profit so the idea that they receive money from both parents and program is common.

Julia Beatty was most finished struggling during adolescence when she returned home from the wilderness program. She had to meet ups and downs for years before she found her way of living an adult life. Life became very much the same as if she hadn't gone to the program. Her parent’s money was wasted.



Source:
IT HAPPENED TO ME: MY PARENTS SENT ME AWAY TO A WILDERNESS SURVIVAL CAMP (XO-Jane)

Can you ever go back?

A survivor from an unknown wilderness program asks on Reddit how she can return to normal life after having been banished to a wilderness program and another program.

And it is difficult. Only teenagers who have been banished and discarded from their family can understand the empty black hole they have in their hearts. They are also the only persons who can understand the ordeals and misery they had endured during the hikes; the starvation and the thirst when the guide’s loss track of their location as it happened in the wilderness.

Maybe it is why the teenagers find themselves abandoned by their friends who have kept their standards. It is impossible to explain the feelings and it might scare them off when the survivor speaks of things which should have been forbidden to expose minors to considering that we live in year 2013.

Their friends are simply not educated to deal with the issues any residential placement inflicts on the survivors. In many cases it takes professionals years - even decades to deal with the posttraumatic stress wilderness program often inflicts on the survivors.

Can you give meaningful advice to such a survivor?

It is difficult to answer.


Source:
Has anyone else experienced social anxiety after returning to normal life? (Reddit)

Blog: 63 Days in the Desert

This blog is a work in progress based on journals made many years before.

The wilderness program is the Challenger Foundation which transformed the wilderness programs from being positive outings to boot camp styled punishments. Did they plan ahead to secure that the children were secured by having backup teams ready with emergency supplies? No. They ran a risky operation and what history later told them were that they were lucky not to having killed more students.

Still despite the punishments and the ordeals these teenagers had to endure they got something from the programs. They got new friends they bonded with under pressure from the instructors. Until the former students die they will share the memories of friendships acquired under extreme circumstances.

However, maybe the price of these friendships was too high because they were forced to leave some behind. For teenagers like Kristen Chase the price was too high because she never made it back to her family.

Regardless of the opinion we have made of the program try to read the blog with an open mind. Everyone carried their own memories back home. Memories which would mark their lives forever.

Source:

• 63 Days in the Desert (Blog)
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

Blog: Challenger: Summer 1989

Before Challenger there were outbound programs where the goal was to give children from the cities a positive wilderness experience.

Challenger invented wilderness boot camps. Today no wilderness program will state that they are operated like a boot camp. They will use a lot of space trying to tell people that the main focus is therapy.

But the fact is that wilderness programs today function very similar to Challenger.

Another side effect is the children who die in programs. Challenger started this trend and wilderness programs continue to claim the lives of teenagers to this very day. Wilderness programs are not safe regardless of what programs like "Brat Camp" makes it look.

Wilderness programs are deadly!

The author behind the blog survived and she is using her diary to give the readers a rare insight in how it was to be an innocent teenager who was dragged out in the desert by strangers from their own bed without any warning in the middle of the night.

Sources:

• Challenger: Summer 1989
• Factsheet about the program (Fornits Wiki)

Book: Janice's Journey

In 2006 a Danish teenager went on a holiday at her mother’s place or at least so she believed. As it turned out differences in the Danish and American youth culture meant that she found herself categorized as an at-risk teen despite being regarded a normal school girl in Denmark.

She has told her story to the Ylä Maatila who helped her rewrite her diary and various notebook entries into a biography which are published for free at Movellas.

Her story deals with the issue of being dumped in an alien culture with values very unlike the values she had been raised with.

Can she use the skills learned to change her destiny outlined for her due the special Danish structure with social classes structuring the future of young Danes based on their social heritage or will she return to Denmark having remained true to the cultural standards of her birth culture?

Link:
Janice's journey (by Janice Jensen and Ylä Maatila)

Movie: Coldwater

From the homepage of the movie:

Brad Lunders is a teenager forcefully abducted from his home in the middle of the night by his mother’s consent to a harsh wilderness reform facility. There is no contact with the outside world and the retired war colonel in charge prides himself on breaking an inmate’s spirit in order to correct delinquent behavior. As we learn of the tragic events that led to Brad’s arrival, unforeseen circumstances threaten to tear the already eroding reform facility apart, forcing Brad to confront not only his fellow inmates and the personnel in charge, but finally his own sense of what is right and what is wrong.

 

Source:
Homepage of the movie

Freddy at Sagewalk

Freddy McConnel died in 2011.

Before his death he went to the wilderness program called Sagewalk, which were closed in 2009 due to a death in the program. He also entered a rehab facility in South Africa.

He had written his story before he died and parts of it was published in the British Newspaper Daily Mail online.

Here is a part of the article.

I arrived at the SageWalk office scared out of my wits. I was stripped of my belongings and clothes and given a bright orange uniform similar to those worn in prison. I was handcuffed, blindfolded and thrust into the back of an SUV for a two-hour drive into the Oregon desert where, with a large, heavy rucksack containing a sleeping bag, rice, lentils and farina (a sort of carbo¬hydrate gloop), a small tarpaulin, orange clothes and hiking boots, I was left in the ‘care’ of two of the hillbillies who accompanied us.

I at once refused to do anything they said and to my horror received a slap to the face. I told them that that was illegal but they ignored me and, as I further protested, one of them pushed me and I fell face- first to the ground, cutting my face and starting to bleed. I recall shrieking amid tears of anguish for my dad to save me but it was to no avail.

About a week into my stay, we were backpacking and there was a small rock face, maybe 10ft high, that we had to climb with our backpacks on. We had already hiked about five miles that day and I was feeling faint.

Halfway up, I lost consciousness for a second, or just lost my footing, and fell 5ft on to a rock. I landed back first and experienced an excruciating pain.

When I put my hand to my back to inspect the damage I felt a hot, thick trickle of blood. I asked for a doctor but received instead a kick to the ribs and an order to keep on hiking. The next break wasn’t for another mile-and-a-half. I have since seen doctors and had X-rays and it seems that it is a permanent injury. This makes me feel extremely bitter and upset.

There were no phones so I couldn’t talk to my parents and the letters were checked before we sent them so I couldn’t tell them what was happening.

I delayed telling my parents even after I was let out because there is a policy that if the child misbehaves within two years, they can be sent back for free.

The brutality continued for two months until I was set free. It was like being born again but I carried a huge amount of resentment.

Needless to say that what little trust was left in his parents, he was now afraid of them but the harsh treatment did not cure him of his addiction. It only postpones his abuse of drugs for some months because harsh treatment is not healing treatment.

Voluntary programs being run locally based on the need of the addicts is the answer, but that kind of information is hidden by the owners of residential programs.

Sadly the treatment he got was of no use and the world lost not only an 18 year old boy but also a very talented musician.

May his ordeal never be forgotten so youth with addictions can be helped in a decent manner.

Sources:

• How drugs snuffed out Freddy McConnel's brilliant young life - told in his own vividly moving words (The Daily Mail online)