Elements wilderness program utah

We serve adults of all genders who are struggling with depression, anxiety, substance use, trauma, and more. What We Offer. A new beginning. Learn more. Experience New Adventures. Connect your personal goals to exciting new adventures. Discover Your Strengths. We believe in meaningful and practical change. Find a Path Forward. The intensity of wilderness life provides constant opportunities to experiment with new and healthier ways of coping with social and emotional stressors.

Our program relies on four key elements to leverage the wilderness setting and promote awareness and growth. Those elements are: Community, Nature, Wellbeing, and Therapy. When a small group of staff and students live together in the wilderness, they automatically experience a greatly heightened level of interdependence. Every student must depend on every other student and staff member for camp life to go smoothly.

As a result of this constant interdependence, the group becomes an emotionally safe environment where students are able to become more honest and accountable for feelings and behavior patterns. Students tend to replicate the relationship patterns from home within the group, creating opportunities to explore and re-engineer those patterns. While living together, students learn about their respective behaviors and relationship patterns. Through enhanced awareness, students practice and refine new and healthier skills for interacting and cooperating with others.

The simplicity and austerity of nature intrinsically provides opportunities for students to understand the impact their behaviors have on themselves and others. Rather, nature rewards effort, perseverance, and patience and discourages impulsive problem solving.

Students naturally gain confidence and self esteem as they master various outdoor living skills. Nature provides a setting free of distractions where students can easily gain insight and clarity into themselves and others. Living in nature often inspires students to define and connect with the spiritual aspects of their recovery.

Many emotional and psychological disorders have a correlative relationship to imbalances of physical wellbeing. Prior to arriving at Elements Wilderness Program, most students have neglected their physical health which contributes significantly to their emotional and behavioral unrest.

Traditional therapeutic principles and techniques are also a vital part of the Elements program. The therapist helps students and parents understand and engage the wilderness treatment process. The therapist also collaborates with parents and other professionals in aftercare planning. At Elements, we recognize that no one can force true change on a person from the outside, whether by coercion or enticement. We acknowledge that change in behavior alone is not the goal, as behavior can be manipulated and is often not truly internalized.

What we do believe is that our students need consistency and predictability in order to feel safe and understand their environment. Our phase system can help students track their own progress and gain insight into their own personal growth.

It provides our boys with a structure that helps make the process of personal growth feel more concrete and clear. Each phase is as follows:. When students arrive at Elements they are given time to adjust to their unfamiliar surroundings.

This phase is designed to promote trust and prepare students to participate at a minimal level in the community. During this phase, the student spends time away from the social distractions of the group and has time to begin to let go of the confusion from home and connect with the pace of living in the wilderness.

Students are assigned a peer mentor and a staff mentor who support the new student in their physical and emotional acclimation. The new student is given reading and writing assignments that promote reflection on the past and help the student understand and anticipate the process of change.

The purpose of the exploration phase is to promote initial self-awareness and foster therapeutic skills that will be a foundation for ongoing success.

During this phase students receive an intervention letter from their parents. The community becomes a setting to improve consciousness and a setting to practice basic communication and relationship skills. The student learns to rely on the group for emotional and physical support. The student gains self-confidence as he struggles to master living in the wilderness. During this phase the therapist, student, and family work together to develop an individualized treatment plan.

The discovery phase helps students move from simple awareness and cooperation towards deeper accountability and initiative. Students use their new skills to understand the impact their actions have had on themselves and family members. Assignments are designed to promote a deeper understanding of some of the underlying motives for past behavior and help students move towards finding healthier ways of coping.

The student continues to gain confidence as he becomes proficient at living outdoors and less dependent on others for external motivation. You will have access to us on every level.

We work hard to help your son maximize his potential, ensuring that every activity is not only therapeutic, but also transferable to life outside the wilderness. Insight alone is not enough. The same principle applies to your entire family.

Our job is to interrupt maladaptive and self-destructive behaviors, help our boys develop a new path forward, and provide everyone in the picture a real assessment of his needs so the next steps can be planned accordingly.

Wilderness-based treatment has exploded in popularity in recent years as parents and therapists have discovered its power to jumpstart the healing process. The unfortunate result of this growth is that many programs have become larger and less specialized, losing some of the efficacy that made the concept popular in the first place. On the surface, our students may be angry, depressed, anxious, or withdrawn, taking little or no responsibility for their actions.

They cope with these feelings by avoiding their responsibilities, shutting down, blaming others, or engaging in maladaptive mechanisms such as gaming, substance abuse, or overuse of electronics. At Elements, we recognize and address these behaviors, but the real focus is on development of actual, healthy skills to encounter life differently.

Regardless of the clinical diagnosis a boy may carry with him to our door, be it oppositional defiance, depression, dual diagnosis, or autism spectrum disorder, all our boys benefit from our individualized approach to helping them meet their needs head-on. With over 50 years of combined treatment experience, Karen Scrafford, Lynn Smith and I founded Elements Wilderness Program in to exemplify the sweet spot of wilderness therapy and to reclaim its power to heal.

Our success with families depends on a long-term commitment to staying small and specialized so that we can maintain the highest quality possible through a hands-on leadership approach.