WILDERNESS THERAPY
Being in nature is enormously therapeutic, and our mission is to share this incredible learning and life enhancing experience with people who have had very little opportunity or experience of being outside of the urban context, or have severe mental health issues.
Walking in wild and mountainous areas of the British countryside can have an enormously uplifting effect on mental wellbeing.
At Mountainwise we specialise in delivering our Wilderness Therapy Outdoor Residentials alongside a variety of agencies so that they form part of a wider therapeutic framework helping young people and families facing complex difficulties.
WILDERNESS THERAPY, A DEFINITION
Wilderness Therapy is an adventure-based therapy treatment modality for behaviour modification and interpersonal self-improvement, combining experiential education, individual and group therapy in a wilderness settings.
It is rooted in ample evidence that being in nature “is effective in facilitating positive characterological change, and in treating character pathology. This is significant for two reasons. First, short-term interventions leading to character change are almost unheard of in the personality literature. Second, personality disorders take a huge emotional and financial toll on individuals, families and society, and they are notoriously difficult to treat”.
(The Effects of Wilderness Therapy on the Clinical Concerns (on Axes I, II, and IV) of Troubled Adolescents. Jeffrey P. Clark, Leonardo M. Marmol, Robert Cooley, and Kathleen Gathercoal Joumal of Experiential Education 2004, Volume 27, No. 2)
BESPOKE RESIDENTIALS
Mountainwise offers a range of bespoke Wilderness Therapy Residentials which can include:
Coast and River activities – coasteering, canoeing, sea kayaking, improvised rafting, sea level traversing and gorge scrambling.
Mountain activities – walking, navigation and mountain skills, bushcraft and camping.
Climbing activities – indoor and outdoor climbing and abseiling.
OUR PROJECTS
FAMILIES ACTIVITY PROGRAMME
Mountainwise provides the Family Activity Programme for families with complex difficulties from Families Forward, an intervention team from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who work holistically to prevent family breakdown and children or young people entering the care system.
The Family Activity Programme offers systemic intervention through activities where families can re-author who they are and improve family relationships through activities such as climbing, kayaking and camping.
This provides a safe space for families to spend quality time together with support to improve their family relationships.
“James, we thank you as always for your continuous support with the Family Activities programme. Your drive, your humour and your expertise make it such a pleasure to work with you in an environment that has assumed risks, and you always make the families and staff feel safe”.
– Espie Whelan, Family Activities Lead Co-ordinator, Families Forward, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
This award winning video “Family Time” is a joint project undertaken by the Families Activities Programme and See Change Films in which the participants filmed each other and talked about their experiences.
OUT OF THE CITY INTO THE WILD
This project took disadvantaged young people and their families, on a series of Wilderness Therapy weekends including a multi-day hike across Dorset, a two day wild camping and canoe trip paddling down the River Medway and a family bushcraft camp in Essex.
These activities were embedded within an established therapeutic framework with a family therapist present, and provided opportunities for praise, reflection, and feedback. They provided opportunities for families to spend quality time together and improve their family relationships.
In order to cultivate long-term change in behaviour and mental health, this intervention is only possible with the support of their carers. The reaction of the families to abandoning phones and spending two days staring at a campfire was transformative.
OUTDOOR EXPLORE PROGRAMME
The Outdoor Explore Programme was an immersive experience run in partnership with Jamie’s Farm which combines farming, family and therapy to try to prevent exclusions from schools and all the negative consequences that that entails.
In this programme disadvantaged young people were given the skills and knowledge to be able to get out into the country and continue their connection with the outdoors that they had discovered in the residential farming experience at Jamie’s Farm and to help keep their belief in their own abilities and strengths alive and growing.
NORFOLK WALKING THERAPY PROJECT
Mountainwise worked alongside Discovery Quest to provide the award winning Norfolk Walking Therapy Project, a six-month hiking and camping training programme for people with severe mental health issues.
Walking in wild and mountainous areas of the British countryside can have an enormously uplifting effect on mental wellbeing. The programme built up to a 10 day trip hiking and camping along the West Highland Way in the Scottish highlands.
The aim of the project was to increase the confidence of the participants in their own abilities and reduce the isolation they can feel by getting them to take part in walking groups. Ultimately this sense of achievement and increased self esteem can lead to participants becoming less dependant on medication.