When visiting one well known quality program for younger kids, our consultant Tom Croke challenged the staff on the above point.  After some bobbing and weaving, the other program staff agreed with my point but said they needed to create a program for kids so that demand from parents and educational consultants for wilderness opportunities for that age group.  While they took justifiable pride in their belief that they were providing the best wilderness opportunity available for that age group, they did seem to agree that they were getting many kids for whom wilderness was not the modality of choice. 

This is not just a theoretical problem.  There is a pattern of a few participants mentally decompensating in wilderness.   One therapist in an excellent wilderness program recently told our consultant, Tom Croke, that she tends to have this happen once per month.  This situation is more concerning because wilderness programs tend not to have agreements with psychiatric hospitals to admit such wilderness programs immediately when this occurs, making it a very difficult problem to deal with safely.  This potential makes it doubly important to avoid wilderness for people at risk for decompensating and also points to the need for wilderness to develop appropriate agreements with hospitals.

Wilderness programming is effective for many participants because of the fact that it takes the participants outside of their usual comfort zone. Doing so creates a certain amount of anxiety that inspires young people who are primarily spoiled, entitled and undisciplined  (and some others) to take responsibility for finding ways to alleviate their own anxieties responsibly, by their own actions and by participating in teamwork with the rest of the group in wilderness.  In addition, adding some anxiety to the experience of an older teen can sometimes be an ingredient that produces a more insightful evaluation. But this is powerful medicine to be used in a discriminating way.  It should never be used as a punishment. It should be used when a truly therapeutic benefit that outweighs dangers and discomforts is anticipated. 

Before sending a child in any of these categories, we encourage you to check with a qualified mental health professional who knows the child well and ask whether or not the anxiety that is inevitable in a wilderness program would be constructive. 

Note that this is about therapeutic wilderness programs.  Organizations like Outward Bound and NOLS offer high quality wilderness programming for high functioning youth and adults.  That is not at issue here.  At times organizations like this have at times offered programming for youth at risk.  We have not been comfortable with the quality of such programming from these organizations for youth at risk.  We want NOLS and Outward Bound and similar organizations to stick with the work they are good at and leave the at-risk kids to others.   

As a matter of safety, we want to see every wilderness program with at least one  staff member with each group trained and certified as an EMT (or other first responder)  at all times -- that means 24-7 -- with two normally reliable means of communication with operations base. One typical means of communication would be a satellite phone and the other would be standard two way radio with repeaters so placed as to fill in all dead spots.  In some areas standard cell phones might be one means of reliable communication. Two way radios that depend upon repeaters do not count if weather conditions (snow accumulating on the repeater antenna, for example) can render it ineffective and there is not an immediate staff response at all times to maintain that as on open channel).  There also needs to be a helicopter medical evacuation capability. 

We want to be sure there is access to a hospital truly prepared to accept and properly treat the kinds of illnesses and injuries that might reasonably occur (including suddenly acute mental illnesses).  We know of an instance of a person sustaining multiple spinal fractures in a wilderness program in central Utah, then was transported without access to an ambulance or helicopter past two hospitals that claimed they lacked the ability to help, and was finally admitted to a large medical center over one hundred miles away.  We seek documentation that a repeat of this situation would not occur.  Wilderness programs citing access to a nearby hospital need to ensure that hospital can respond appropriately to all injuries and mental illnesses that might occur in wilderness – including on weekends. 

Overnight backpacking hikes, rock climbing, rappelling, canoeing, etc. under winter conditions are not safe and should be banned. We have known of one wilderness program that had a ritual of clients near completion of their program hiking at night on a well marked trail -- always the same trail for that event -- with staff immediately in line of sight of every participant and lanterns lighting the way. We can see that as a legitimate exception if there is a particular benefit to that activity and effective safety precautions are in place.  However, having a group bushwhack on a compass routing on a winter night (or a summer night in bad weather) is an unacceptable safety risk and is not acceptable to us.  We seek evidence of enforced policies that absolutely prevent such activities.

Feedback is invited. We will publish selected feedback.  Email:  FamilyLightResponse@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: No  program review, no matter how positive, is a blanket endorsement. No criticism is a blanket condemnation.  When we express our level of confidence in a school or program, that is our subjective opinion with which others might reasonably disagree.  When we assert something as fact, we have done our best to be accurate, but we cannot guarantee that all of our information is accurate and up to date. When we address compliance with our guidelines, you need to remember that these are only OUR guidelines -- not guidelines from an official source.  We have also set the bar very high, and do not expect any school or program to be in total compliance.  It is not appropriate to draw a conclusion of impropriety (or even failure to live up to conventional wisdom) from our lack of confidence in a school or program or from less than perfect conformity to our guidelines.  Some will say we expect too much. Readers are responsible for verifying accuracy of information supplied here prior to acting upon it. We are not responsible for inaccuracies.