I have heard there are a lot of these places in Utah

26 comments

  1. My cousin went to a wilderness camp after being kicked out of the military school he was sent to. He was a real fuck up, extremely disrespectful to everyone and anyone who tried to help him, up and abusing drugs and alcohol and stealing from everyone at a young age. My aunt tried everything to help him.

    After a few months at the camp he ran away and spent time on the streets of California before waking up realizing that 4 day meth benders weren’t a future.

    He came back to NJ a toned down person, got himself in a 12 step program and 20 years later he is doing great married working as a union electrician.

    None of it “worked” other than his own willpower, but it all brought him to where he is today.

  2. My sister went to a boarding school for a year in o help resolve behavioral issues. She came back even angrier.

  3. Not in any official capacity.

    But I’m a “Class A” wilderness ranger, and when I get the short straw and am assigned to training duty for a week?

    It’s awfully funny how many of my “trainees” have absolutely no interest in the wilderness.

    It’s cool though. I’ve got a little experience being a moody teenager myself. A little empathy and a few days in the woods usually sets them back in the right track.

  4. I don’t know anybody who got sent to one, they are likely less common than you you’ve been told.

  5. One of my friends in high school got sent to one and it sounded like a horrible, traumatic experience and he is still estranged from his parents over it.

  6. My best friend was sent to a troubled teen compound in Mexico when his parents caught him with weed when he was 15 (2002).

    The one he was sent to was shut down by Mexican authorities because of the rampant physical and psychological abuse.

    He was there with teens who dealt meth and pimped, while he had just smoked weed a few times.

    He’s told me some fucked up things from that experience. One that has stuck with me was getting a gallon of ice water dumped on him while he was sleeping and the counselor screaming at him “you’re on a sinking ship! Why do you deserve to live??”

  8. Cousin was sent to a wilderness/troubled teen camp. They beat him and withheld food, had him sleep in the shittiest tents in rainstorms while having him build trails and yurts. The area they “worked” in eventually was sold to a Christian resort. A settled lawsuit got him and others some $800 or something else meaningless.

    He ran away, my sister and I drove to pick him up at a near by town.

  9. Yes my close friend in high school got sent to one. It was very traumatic for him (as they’re generally designed to be), and I think long term it did little to address the issues his parents saw (mostly drug related).

    The trauma gave him *serious trust issues, especially with his parents. I think they really regret sending him. It took years and years for them to even partially repair that relationship, and I don’t think those scars will ever fully heal. It also didn’t do much in terms of his interest in drugs, he eventually started using pills and was sent to rehab about 10 years later for benzo addiction. I’ve mostly lost touch with him unfortunately, but he was doing pretty bad in pretty much every way last time I saw him. Still had drug issues, was in an abusive relationship, had a hard time with employment, and was starting to get into alt right stuff. It sucks because we were quite close growing up.

    I don’t know if these programs work for some kids, but from my limited knowledge all they do is traumatize people with very little short term or long term benefit.

  10. I grew up in a tight Catholic comminity. I wouldn’t call it common, but I also wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it was unusual. A handful of people that went to my middle school or high school were sent away over the years. It was mainly kids from other schools in our school system. I think most of them just went to the military academy an hour away. That would eventually be closed because they had too many lawsuits and not enough money to keep the place open. I remember a girl in my religion class just sort of disappeared. People tried to get CPS involved but her parents had answers for everything. We eventually learned she was at a “therapuetic camp in Mexico.” She returned halfway through junior year and it was just… it was difficult to describe but she wasn’t herself anymore. It was like the invasion of body snatchers or something. She’d always been loud, talkative and assertive. She was that person who would snort, “bullshit” under her breath if a teacher was sexist. Now she was timid and frightened. She would only do things if she had explicit permission and she had a hard time raising her hand to ask for that permission. I ended up being the one to ask if she could get up to blow her nose, etc. I lost track of her after graduation but I’ve always hoped she’s doing okay.

    There was also someone I knew through Greek life in college who claimed to have been sent to the conversion camp version. Unfortunately there’s been some recent controversy and it sounds like that might have been exaggerated or fabricated. Their family and childhood friends claim to have proof that they were happy and living in town during that time. So now I don’t know what to believe.

  11. My friend (ish) in high school went to one in Samoa. It didn’t go well, he was starved and abused.

  12. Yes, one of my good friends was sent to one. He was quite the wayward youth.

    It straightened him up big time, ha came back and enrolled in military school, joined the marines, and last I heard had a family and owned his own shop working on off road trucks and jeeps.

  13. A friend went to fat camp in high school. It did her more damage than good. She gained a substantial amount of weight not long after. Sadly, she died recently at 500 pounds.

    My cousin sent her teenaged son to military school for bad behavior. He was miserable, but he got his shit together and acted better after that.

  14. Lol yup! I got sent to military school in the mountains….it was one of the most trying, memorable and rewarding periods of my life…i’ll never forget it from my childhood.

  15. In her memoire, Paris Hilton details a lot of the abuse she suffered at Provo, along with the lifelong PTSD because of it. It’s shocking how these places are still allowed to operate.

  16. My best friend went to one. Went up to Minnesota for it, it was the first time he experienced snow. It helped him pretty substantially, and he’s still in contact with people he met there.

  17. I had a couple friends in highschool that grew up in rough alcoholic families with little discipline. Good guys, but absolutely abhorrent with authority. My state had a military education program they ended up getting sent to. As far as I know it didn’t really fuck them up too bad. They got into great shape and now I wouldn’t consider them “total success” stories, they have jobs and are generally productive people.

  20. I was almost sent to a boarding school for teens who “struggled in a traditional school environment,” but my mom’s therapist talked her out of it.

    Sometimes I wonder if they would have figured out I had ADHD if she had, instead of me getting a surprise diagnosis at 40.

  21. My wife went to a wilderness camp in her teens. She said they walked through the desert, slept under the stars, and ate canned beans and chili. She was kicked out after getting caught messing around with one of the counselors. I don’t think she was there long.

    She’s the only person I’ve met who went to one of these programs. She said it costs tens of thousands of dollars. She came from a wealthy family.

  22. The key is finding an excellent program. Us parents sent our 20 yo daughter to one because she was paralyzed by overwhelming anxiety and crippling depression. As she was an adult, she consented to the program.

    We sent her to a Wilderness Therapy program in Costa Rica (dry season). She slept outside under the stars, she spent 1 week a month learning to surf in the Pacific, 1 week hiking through their national parks, 1 week helping in a local village, and 1 week a month kayaking in the Pacific Ocean. And she ate fruits straight off the plants, and simple Central American meals cooked as a team.

    Being constantly challenged (24/7) raised her tolerance for distressing situations a thousand fold and it broke her depression. She now talks about her life before Wilderness and wishes she could have had the emotional regulation she now has because of Wilderness.

    You have to be “Paris Hilton” rich to just send your kid to one of these programs. Most parents love their kid and have tried everything any certified professional has suggested, before they remortgage their house and cash out their retirement savings to pay $50,000 for a 3 month program.

    In our case, we had already spent years on programs offered by Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Psychiatric Hospital- ostensibly 2 of the best places in the world. Our school district spent $200,000 over 3 years to put her in a top psychiatric therapeutic high school. And still my daughter was frozen by anxiety.

    In our case, Wilderness Therapy was absolutely worth it. It has given her the ability to live the adult life that she truly deserves.

    Yes. Utah has a lot of programs because it is the one state where a kid is not considered an adult until they are 18 so they can be sent to a program without their consent. Programs in any other state require the kid’s consent.

    There are tougher programs than my daughter went to. I think those are chosen by parents who have more complex kids. You have no idea how many psychiatric assessment forms I filled out over the years where I was infinitely grateful that I wasn’t answering yes to standard questions like: does your child set fire to your home, to their school, to other people’s homes or possessions; does your child steal from you, from other people; does your child take drugs, sell drugs; does your child harm you or others.

    Slamming doors and occasionally swearing at your parents is appropriate for teens. Hitting your parents so hard that they repeatedly end up in the hospital with broken bones and lacerations is not appropriate. Selling drugs or their bodies is not appropriate for a kid. And most parents will try to steer their kid into a safer life. If only to keep their kid alive long enough to even turn 25 years old.

    The good Utah hiking programs try to teach kids that you have to keep trying to get what you want. Making a fire starting with 2 sticks so you can cook your dinner is not impossible but it does teach perseverance. My daughter cried all day every day as she hiked or kayaked for 4-5 hours a day. One foot in front of another when all she wanted to do was collapse and give up. But she did it. Every step or stroke.

    I will REITERATE- the key is finding a good program.

  23. I used to work at a school bus lot. I was a receptionist during grad school. I loved it. I talked to the old drivers a lot.

    One of them said he used to drive kids to one of these places. He said it was so far back in the woods, he never could get there without getting lost. He told me all sorts of stories about it.

    Later, I was driving with my dad and we went sort of near this place. My dad said he used to run a lot near there. I mentioned about the troubled teen school. My dad said he had heard of it. I asked him, jokingly, if he was going to send me there. He said, “Eh, it got tempting sometimes.”

    That alone fucked me up. I’m autistic, and my parents had money. I was the perfect demographic to be sent somewhere like that, so my parents could keep up their Perfect Family facade. Knowing they were considering that has messed me up.

  24. I didn’t get sent to one, but my brother worked at one in college. He said that he sure the horror story schools exist but his was pretty cool. They had lots of priveleges/rewards for good behavior to motivate them to behave, and bad behavior just meant missing out on a lot. A lot of the kids liked him since he was only a few years older than him. His school was mostly kids with “affluenza” who learned pretty fast that they’d be spending a lot of time bored if they acted rebellious. I still think they’re a bad idea in general though, since there’s so much opportunity for schools to go too far or hide abuse and parents don’t have a good way to know what is really going on.

  25. At 15 mom sent me up to a “boys home” in the middle of nowhere northern Wisconsin for kiddos who had lots of potential but couldn’t stay out of trouble. I was deemed “incorrigible” due to my chronic sticky fingers and penchant for vandalism; nothing heavy.

    Aside from mandatory church attendance, it turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to me. My single mom did her best but was a tortured soul who deliberately *chose* to never deal with her own emotional demons. You can’t pass on what you don’t have. The poor woman was ill-equipped to handle me, teach me, be an adult role model, demand respect, or discipline me, so I ran wild. Immature adults trying to raise children is not in my list of top recommendations, but so it goes.

    The staff instilled crucial missing early life lesson stuff: discipline, respect for others & self, the value of hard work, keeping your word, and other goodies which they wisely knew would give us the best possible shot at avoiding troubles after “graduation.”

    We were all liars and master manipulators, insidious habits that stubbornly resist changing. Staff was skillfully trained in methods of reforming these behaviors, but success was spotty.

    I also learned *all about* weed, liquor, and hallucinogens from the other boys. Some of us earned weekly unsupervised visits to town, and it was ON. After 8 months I got out and miraculously never stole or vandalized again, but did trudge through 10+ years of periodic alcohol & hard drug abuse.

    Best to stop there and resist the momentum to share my entire life story and summarize by saying yeah, my “troubled teen” program was a very positive experience. Not the cure-all, but still invaluable. I remain extremely grateful it happened. Predictably, I didn’t fully appreciate the life-changing impact of this little vacation until well into adulthood.

    So what prompted you to AskAnAmerican about this ?

  26. My SIL was sent to one after being caught with weed by her parents. She wasn’t told exactly where she was going when she packed so she brought like a hair straightener and other things that they threw out as soon as she got there.
    She had to start a fire from scratch in order to eat every day and she had to dig a hole in the ground and fill it with clean water every day in order to wash her hair & body daily. They hiked miles upon miles every day. They weren’t allowed to stop and camp in one spot. They would move the camp every night. She was certain at the time that if she tried to run away she would die alone in the wilderness. She was there for 2-3 months.

    She does like to start a fire with sticks as a party trick now, it’s impressive. Most of her friends from this camp that had gotten out and we’re far from rehabilitated. Within a year of leaving her camp she had moved out of her parents home at 17 and into her 29 year old boyfriend’s place, he got her addicted to heroin pretty quickly. After years of struggling with addiction, and burying over half of her high school friends, she’s been clean for 5+ years now. She’s not even 30 yet.

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