Wilderness therapy programs are based on the idea that if you take a troubled teen out of their environment, away from corrupting influences, and put them in nature, so they gain skills to be independent and conquer challenges, they will then break out of their old patterns of problematic behavior. It sounds so promising. Parents or grandparents spend thousands on putting their kids through such programs. But Kenneth Rosen’s Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs catalogs a long list of problems with them. 

Some teens are defiant, engage in risky behavior, self-destructive behavior, and cause huge problems to their families. It isn’t surprising that those with responsibility for them are willing to take desperate measures. These programs can be extreme. Some teens are basically abducted from their homes and driven away to the wilderness. There are strict rules and strong discipline in the camps and boarding schools. 

Rosen himself was put into such a program when he was young, and his experience was bad. His research showed that many other people who went through them also found their time in the program very unpleasant. It turns out that there is very little evidence that these programs are effective. There are also problems with underfunding, religious ideology, lack of regulation, and even abuse. Some teens have died.

Troubled follows a number of teens through their experience. Rosen tells their stories, bringing them alive to the reader. He combines these stories with facts about programs and their histories. This makes the information easily digestible. One comes away with a better understanding of the history of these kinds of programs and the problems they have. It seems that they can be more traumatizing than helpful, and that they should be banned as a form of therapy. 

One worry about the book is that Rosen paints with a broad brush. The fact that there are many bad programs out there doesn’t mean that they are all bad. But it does mean that it will be very difficult for parents to know how much to trust a particular program. What is especially good about Rosen’s approach is that he takes the problem behavior of teens seriously, and he does not propose any simple solution. He appreciates the dilemmas faced by parents. 

If you do an internet search for “therapeutic boarding schools” or something similar, you get a long list of ads and places selling their services. It is clearly a big business. Troubled will at least give readers some clue about how to assess these programs and what concerns to have. 

Ray Chase’s performance of the unabridged audiobook is excellent. 

Christian Perring is President of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry.

Categories: Psychotherapy, ChildhoodDisorders

Keywords: troubled teens, wilderness programs