Conrad Cone assumed a great personal and financial risk when he left his
full-time job as a counselor with a school board to start an outdoor adventure
company that, among other things, offers adventure-based therapy programs.
The basic idea sounds straightforward: adventure therapy creates stressful
situations that encourage and force patients to learn something about themselves
with the hope that this new knowledge will help them overcome mental pain
or patterns of destructive behavior.
But does this make adventure therapy any different from military-like boot
camps and other outdoor programs that test survival skills? Are adventure
therapists mental health professionals or not? And what about safety standards
for therapists and patients?
Such key questions continue to fuel debates. They make it difficult for
the field to develop any kind of reputation that would make health insurers
and governments less wary about paying for adventure-based therapy. So Cone
has found it difficult to earn a living from the adventure-based program he
offers.
"If social service decides one day that this is an important service and
wants to put some money towards it, then I can make a living at it. But now,
I don't," he says.
But money did not motivate Cone to go into the field of adventure-based
therapy. Instead, it was his love for the outdoors and his desire to make
a difference in the lives of the kids whom he was trying to help. They all
had a history of social disadvantage or misbehavior that made it difficult
for them to fit in.
"They were not succeeding in a traditional school," Cone says. "But when
we took them outside...you saw them be successful. You saw their self-esteem
go up, you saw their trust level go up, and you saw them start talking and
acting like kids."
That personal experience, combined with his growing belief that existing
treatment methods were failing, led Cone to the conclusion that there was
a demand for such programs. Since nobody offered them in his area, Cone decided
that he would.
"It was kind of neat being a pioneer, doing something that hasn't been
tried before here," he says. It has also been a source of many emotional,
dramatic and some may say dangerous moments.
Consider this story. The counselor of a school asked Cone to help students
deal with the suicide of a classmate. So he put together a rock climbing tour
that was intentionally difficult, hoping that it would encourage students
to ask each other for help and support.
But one of the students suffered a panic attack halfway up the rock face
she was climbing. "She just broke down in tears on the rock face," says Cone.
Her eventual rescue then touched off another intense emotional scene on
the ground. "The whole group ran to her side and started hugging her," Cone
says. "And everybody, the whole group of teachers and kids, started crying.
And after everybody had stopped crying, we had a circle, and we were talking
about what was going on."
The discussion established that life presents obstacles, but that they
can be overcome. Later that day, the girl tried again and this time, she made
it all the way up.
"When she went up [again], she figured out a way to get support from people,"
Cone says.
But such emotional moments can also swing the other way. And anybody who
wants to go into adventure therapy must have the right people and clinical
skills to deal with such moments.
"People tend to move very quickly into very strong emotions," says Shelly
Ramsey. She is an adventure therapist from Arlington, Texas. "You can really
be in a major crisis if you don't have the skills to deal with it."
Ramsey learned some of those skills through her education as a clinical
social worker. She also draws on the acting experience she gained through
her undergraduate degree in theater. "In theater, you have a lot of the same
skills that you use in therapy," she says.
"I have to be able to get into somebody else's skin. I have to be able
to understand where that person is coming from, and I have to be able to understand
what those dynamics are."
Of course, adventure therapists must also fully understand the physical
dangers they and patients face when they go through adventure therapy. And
often, the patients themselves may be a source of physical harm, as Ramsey
found out.
One day, she led a group of high school students who were convicted criminals
to a rope course. The group included two rival gang members. They soon got
into a fight, and Ramsey and others had to physically step in to end the situation.
Brandt Stuart is an adventure therapist in Eugene, Oregon. And he readily
admits that he was a bit scared when he co-led a group of hardened criminals
on a backcountry trip through the Oregon Cascades. Stuart says the group included
convicted murderers. But nothing serious happened. In fact, it gave Stuart
a moment to remember.
It was a beautiful summer day, and the meadows they were walking through
were in full bloom. Several of the convicts just dropped to their knees and
started smelling the flowers, Stuart recalls.
"They were just blown away," he says. "They had spent so much time behind
bars, and there was just this sense of beauty and freedom that had nothing
to do with us. All we had to do was take them to this place. It opened them
up in a way that I am sure that they had never experienced before. It was
really the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced in my work."