Essay on Wilderness Therapy and Conventional Therapy

"Furthermore, Selekman believed there are assumptions that benefit those who deal with resistant adolescents and their families. The assumptions are extremely practical and provide therapists a new lens for viewing the tough adolescent case. Each of the guiding assumptions provides a wellness perspective on adolescent problems, families, and brief therapy. Matching our treatment to the state of change will foster a cooperative relationship. Therapists must specify the level of the change. That is the key to adolescent resistance. Next positive relabeling can describe a withdrawn adolescent as a thoughtful teenager" (2005, p. 32).

Demonstrating how valuable experiences in nature can be when you have someone else to experience it

Aside from memorable conversations and quality time with dad, hiking has affected my personality in so many different ways. By hiking and getting outdoors, I’m challenging not only my body, but my mind as well. Many

Change make us feel alive because it is the essence of every living thing. Chris MacCandless and Timothy Treadwell desperately needed a change in their lives in order to escape from their past unpleasant experiences and problems and they found their solution in the wilderness. Leaving the human word of comfortable excesses and surrendering their fates to nature empowered them to gain back a feeling of control over their lives. When your life is under a constant threat and you push yourself to your limits trying to survive in the wild, you start looking at many things differently than in normal circumstances. Wilderness can be a perfect place to find a peace in your mind and help you find your answers, but it is also a dangerous place that you

Mental health clinical this week was located at Avera Behavior Health in Sioux Falls. My patient interview took place in the adolescence mental health wing. The type of treatment provided was structured, inpatient treatment and the average length-of-stay in this unit was around 6 days.

According to William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”, the main concerns with the wilderness term being humanly constructed and lack of concern with the local environments. Cronon emphasize much of the historical and philological meanings of wilderness as a human construct via spiritual and religious perspectives. He desired for people stop putting so much emphasis on the above and beyond that is out of our reach and focus on the present. He pushed this into the idea of one should start putting emphasis and care into one’s own environment rather than just focusing on environments beyond the local one. He believes change should start locally.

It has been brought to the attention of our new Recreational Therapist staff at this facility, that there are not enough programs or accessible information pertaining to leisure resources for our current consumers who are being discharged from the facility. The specific issue we would like to address are solutions for our clients who struggle with PTSD. As an RT our job is to develop a treatment plan/service designed to restore, remediate, recreate, and rehabilitate an individual’s functional abilities and independence. To promote health and wellness as well as reduce or eliminate the barriers to participation in activities and life situations are the major goals as RTs to decrease consumer dependency. As a Recreational Therapist, providing clients with leisure- education is important so patients can be knowledgeable of what resources are available to them (Carter, M., & Van Andel, G. (2011). Without proper local environmental, leisure

This proposal is to help bring to life the Semester on the Appalachain, a semester long expedition on the Appalachian Trail for a group of ten participants, in order to provide an environment that can not be replicated in a typical classroom setting. In the proposal, it will provide research on the benefits of experiential and expedition education, improvement on psychological health, and organizations that run similar programs.

This presentation is on the article titled, “Recovery Ranch”, by Tim Smith. This recovery facility caters to those with a number of ailments, including PTSD. This facility located in Nunnelly, TN offers a continuum of addiction treatment services. This outdoor facility allows the clients to participate in an array of recreational and leisure activities. Some treatments of PTSD are cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive processing therapy. The ranch can be quite costly. Recovery ranch uses the social behaviors of the clients in order for their healing process to begin. This topic was chosen because the clients are able to partake in many nature activities and the participants are able to cope better with people that they can relate to. It

Hennessy, K. D., & Green-Hennessy, S. (2011). A review of mental health interventions in SAMHSA 's national registry of evidence-based programs and practices. Psychiatric Services (Washington, D.C.), 62(3), 303-305. doi:10.1176/ps.62.3.pss6203_0303

Natural environments and outdoor settings are common places people go when they want to relax or temporarily escape life’s problems. Most often, when choosing where to vacation, people commonly select a destination with picturesque sceneries or serene landscapes. For this reason, natural outdoor settings seem like an ideal place to incorporate recreational therapy activities for those with physical and mental health issues. Recreational therapists should consider several aspects of their patients lives when creating these outdoor therapy programs. This paper explores the social cognitive theory and the behavioral, personal, and environmental constructs that affect the behavior of veterans with PTSD and other psychological health issues. There will be a brief discussion regarding the details of the study as well as the author’s findings. In particular, the role of the environment on one’s behavior will be examined.

Wilderness experiences are programs that focus on outdoor activities to help develop self-worth, pride, and trust in others. This program is an alternative to incarceration, and is less expensive. Wilderness programs like The Rawhide Boys Ranch have had a great deal of success. RBR is a faith-based residential center in Wisconsin and was established in the 1960s. RBR can accommodate around 60 at-risk youths who suffer from mental illnesses. RBR has shown great success during their evaluation resulting in a 73 percent success rate.

In adolescent psychotherapy, the therapist needs to be aware of the relationship adolescents have with each other and with their parents and caretakers. At this point in their lives, these relationships are often quite tumultuous (Holmes, Heckel, & Gordon, 1991). In addition to their social networks, the therapist also needs to be attentive to the manner in which the adolescent’s early experiences form their sense of self and respect the adolescent’s desire to be independent and be active in deciding the paths of their lives. With this in mind, the therapist will allow adolescent group members to have a more active role in participating and at times even taking a leadership role within the group sessions

Long distance hiking not only helps you physically, but an also help you grow mentally. Many suggest hiking as a therapeutic experience. On long distance hikes, the hiker distances themselves from the trivialities of modern day society and funnels all their attention on only themselves and the trail. This dissociation from life allows the hiker to forget any anxieties they had before the start of their journey. Hiking connects you with nature, appreciating it in its entirety. Hikers takes themselves out of their daily lives and join many others with a similar goal, entering into an accepting community of fellow hikers. Hiking can also boost creativity, as it disconnects one from technology and modern conveniences. They instead must rely on the items in their pack and what they can find in nature. Long distance hiking is considered a form of therapy evoking feelings of creativity, disconnection from civilization, and community.

The places we visit throughout our lives can sometimes leave a bigger imprint on us than anything else. The novel, Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer, displays a man, named Chris McCandless, who selfishly goes into the Alaskan Interior alone. The places he visits and the way he connects with the people and places around him before and during the journey help exemplify who he is.