The History of Wilderness Therapy: From Troubled Teen Programs to Regulated Clinical Practice

Wilderness therapy has a complicated history — and that complexity matters when you’re choosing a program for your child.

Understanding where this field came from, how it evolved, and why today’s clinical programs look so different from what the term once described can help you ask better questions and make a more confident decision.

The Early Programs: State-Funded and Largely Unregulated (1970s)

The earliest wilderness programs serving troubled youth emerged in the 1970s, largely funded by state governments and drawing from the juvenile justice system. The philosophy was built around challenge and hardship: put struggling teens into demanding outdoor environments, and character would follow.

In practice, these programs ranged widely in quality. Many were run by providers who were unlicensed and undertrained. “Boot camp” thinking dominated — the goal was a challenging, character-building experience rather than anything approaching trauma-informed, therapeutic care. Clinical oversight was minimal or nonexistent.

These programs weren’t designed as catalysts for healing. They were designed to confront and force change without addressing the whole person.

A Critical Insight: Why Wilderness Alone Wasn’t Enough (1990)

By 1990, a more sophisticated understanding was beginning to take shape.

Psychologist Scott Bandoroff, PhD, made a clinical observation that would reshape the field: teenagers who made real gains during wilderness programs often lost that progress when they returned home. The reason wasn’t that the wilderness experience hadn’t worked. It was that the family system the teen returned to hadn’t changed.

That insight gave rise to the field of wilderness family therapy — a model that placed family work at the center of the treatment design, rather than treating the teen as an individual problem to be fixed in isolation. The wilderness could catalyze change, but change had to be held by something when the teen came home.

The Darkest Chapter: Aaron Bacon and a National Reckoning (1994)

In 1994, sixteen-year-old Aaron Bacon died from a treatable ulcer during a wilderness trip run by an unregulated program. He had asked for help. His requests were dismissed. The program shut down entirely.

Aaron’s death became the lowest point of what was increasingly being called the “troubled teen industry,” and it forced a public reckoning with what the lack of regulation was actually costing. For families who had trusted these programs of the past with their children, the news was devastating. For the handful of clinicians who believed wilderness therapy could be done responsibly, it was a call to act.

The OBHRC: Building a Research Foundation (1994)

In the wake of Aaron Bacon’s death, the directors and founders of five wilderness therapy programs gathered in Salt Lake City. Setting aside competition, they agreed on something important: shared principles, shared accountability, and a shared commitment to producing scientific data to find out what actually worked.

That meeting produced the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Research Cooperative — the OBHRC. Keith Russell, PhD, became the organization’s first researcher. Over the following decades, the OBHRC produced more than 200 peer-reviewed studies, establishing wilderness therapy as a research-driven field and drawing a clear line between evidence-based clinical programs and the unregulated boot camps that had defined the industry’s early years.

The founding of the OBHRC didn’t just add oversight. It created a framework for learning — one that made it possible to understand what was helping adolescents and why, rather than simply assuming that hardship in nature was inherently good for them.

Second Nature Is Founded (1998)

Second Nature launched in 1998, one of the first intentional, regulated wilderness therapy programs built from the ground up with clinical rigor at its core.

Rather than assigning field guides to lead teens through the wilderness while therapists checked in weekly from an office, Second Nature placed doctoral-level psychologists and licensed clinicians directly in the field — alongside students, not above them. Individual therapy, group therapy, and family therapy all happened within the wilderness milieu. Not as a clinical overlay on an outdoor program, but as the program itself.

What Second Nature now calls nature-based therapy reflected an emerging clinical consensus: the wilderness isn’t the vehicle for treatment. It’s the treatment environment. The unpredictability of nature, the unique experience of daily life in the field, the absence of screens and social pressures — these elements create conditions for therapeutic change that no residential treatment clinic can manufacture.

To this day, Second Nature is one of the longest-running programs in the wilderness therapy industry.

Read what families who have been through the program have to say about what that experience was like.

Research Validates the Model (2010)

The clinical case for wilderness therapy moved from promising to validated in 2010, when Ellen Behrens, PhD, and colleagues published a landmark review article in the Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs.

Drawing on large-scale longitudinal studies, the research found that youth in wilderness therapy programs showed significant improvements in mood and behavior during treatment — and that those improvements held when they returned home. This was the finding that mattered: not just that teens got better in the field, but that they stayed better after returning home.

Scott Bandoroff’s 1990 observation had pointed to family dynamics as the missing piece. By 2010, the research confirmed it: programs that integrated ongoing family therapy alongside individual treatment produced the most durable outcomes. Change didn’t disappear when the teen walked back through the front door.

The Field Today: Maturity, Variability, and the Questions Worth Asking

Wilderness therapy programs accredited by organizations including NATSAP and AEE now offer tailored clinical approaches for adolescents with diagnosed mental health conditions, behavioral and relational challenges, substance use issues, and whole families. The field continues to evolve: psychiatrists are increasingly part of treatment teams, open-enrollment cohort models allow for more individualized pacing, and outcome tracking has become standard practice at reputable programs.

Quality, however, remains variable. Reputable programs are state-licensed, employ licensed clinicians, and operate within accreditation frameworks. Others are not, and do not. The distinction matters as much today as it did in 1994.

How to Evaluate a Program Using Historical Context

History is useful because it tells you which questions to ask to determine which wilderness therapy programs are regulated and trusted and which are not.

Does the program have licensed clinical therapists as the primary treatment providers — not field guides who report to clinicians? Is it accredited by a recognized body such as the AEE or NATSAP? Does family therapy run throughout the program, not just at the end? What does the transition and aftercare process look like?

Programs that answer these questions confidently and specifically have earned those answers. Programs that redirect, generalize, or can’t name their licensing body deserve more scrutiny.

Second Nature has been answering these questions for 25+ years. Our nature-based therapy program was designed from the beginning to meet the clinical standard that defines this field at its best — not the legacy programs that have, appropriately, given families reason to be cautious.

If you’d like to understand more about why families choose wilderness therapy and what the warning signs look like that lead parents to this decision, that context is a useful place to start.

To talk with someone about whether Second Nature is a fit for your teen, call (877) 701-7600 or reach out to our admissions team. We’re here to help you find the right answer, whatever that turns out to be.

When Historical Research Won’t Answer Your Question

Understanding the history and evidence base for wilderness therapy helps you evaluate programs. It cannot tell you whether a wilderness therapy program is the right step for your specific teen.

For that, you need a clinical assessment — ideally from an educational consultant or independent therapist who knows your teen’s full picture. The research supports what clinical wilderness therapy can do. Whether it’s the right fit for your child is a different, and more important, conversation.

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