With its sweeping desert vistas, millions of acres of public lands to hike through and parent-friendly laws around who can make medical decisions for teenagers, Utah became known as the place to send so-called “troubled teens” for wilderness therapy.
For decades, the state fostered the growth of an industry that made its money on a promise that time spent in the outdoors — and far away from home — would help a child struggling with behavioral issues or substance abuse.
[Read More: How Utah became the birthplace of the once-lucrative wilderness therapy industry for ‘troubled teens’]
But the wilderness therapy industry is now struggling in a way it hasn’t since the early 2000s, when national scrutiny followed the deaths of a number of young people in outdoor youth programs — including five teenagers in Utah, many of whom died of heat-related illness while hiking in the desert.
Today, it’s former students keeping a critical spotlight on programs, by sharing their personal experiences in Netflix shows, on TikTok and other social media, and in podcasts and news coverage. Meanwhile, private equity firms and large corporations have withdrawn their financial backing for the industry, and the two trends have affected bottom lines so drastically that some programs opted to shut down.
With four programs closing in the last year, Utah now has its lowest number of wilderness therapy programs in at least a decade.
The state had, on average, about 11 licensed outdoor youth programs during a 10-year period that began in 2013, data from the Department of Health and Human Services shows. Now, there are just five youth wilderness programs here.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Aspiro Adventure was the first to announce its recent closure, shutting its program down last April after nearly a decade in the business. In an email that has been circulated online, Aspiro’s owners wrote that “recessionary and economic factors,” paired with competition from 30-day inpatient programs that are covered by insurance and negative press have all contributed to an “untenable financial position for Aspiro.”
Two months later, in June, Outback Therapeutic announced it was closing. Its owners wrote in an email posted on Reddit that they were opting to shut down after the program’s executive director stepped away. His decision, they said, came after difficulties he had navigating the program through a pandemic, combined with “increased restrictive regulations, social climate and ongoing economic stressors.”
WinGate Wilderness closed next, in August. And in February of this year, Open Sky Wilderness — which operated in Colorado, but was licensed in Utah because its guides hike with teenagers here in winter months — held its last graduation.
Efforts to reach the owners of these programs were unsuccessful.
The Utah programs still operating have far fewer clients than they are allowed to take, state records indicate. For example, RedCliff Ascent — which has been operating in Utah for more than 30 years — is licensed to take as many as 82 students at one time. Records show it had just eight students during a February 2024 inspection, and only six students were enrolled when licensers visited in September 2023 and in January.
The Salt Lake Tribune attempted to reach owners of Utah programs still operating. Of those contacted, none agreed to speak publicly. Only Devan Glissmeyer, co-founder of Second Nature Wilderness Family Therapy in Duchesne, offered a statement, which noted the industry’s challenges include the rise of both social media and of shorter-term residential competitors.
”For 25 years Second Nature has provided a safe and supportive clinical approach combining sophisticated therapy and the healing power of nature,” he said. “We have worked with over 15,000 families, and are proud of our impeccable safety record.”
Social media backlash
After deaths in Utah and elsewhere in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Congress in 2007 commissioned a federal study that focused on 10 young people who were fatally injured during wilderness therapy — including five placed in Utah programs over a 12-year period beginning in 1990. A bill to federally regulate wilderness therapy and teen residential treatment programs was introduced then, but it never passed.
This tension was building just before the 2008 recession — which shuttered some wilderness therapy businesses, according to Will White, a researcher who has studied and published a book about the history of adventure and wilderness therapy and hosts the podcast, “Stories from the Field.” (He is an advocate for outdoor therapy and founded a program in Maine.)
The industry was hit by private equity firms pulling back investments in wilderness therapy, he said, and some states stopped running government-funded programs. The programs that kept going, he said, adapted — by moving away from both the private equity model and from their former one-size-fits-all approach, better tailoring care to individuals.
The industry survived. But in recent years, intense social pressure has started mounting. And White said he’s seeing the number of outdoor therapy programs shrinking more rapidly.
From 2008 through 2011, “it was more of a slow closure,” White said. “And this time it’s much quicker.”
(Jim Urquhart | The Salt Lake Tribune) Teens climb the Crack in the Wall in Southern Utah in 2008 during an adventure therapy program for troubled teens.
This time, the narrative is being driven by the teenagers who went to these camps and are now adults, many of whom identify themselves as “survivors” of the troubled teen industry.
A quick search on TikTok for “wilderness therapy” shows a stream of young people telling stories about their experiences. A few say they were forced to hike in the desert. One woman described feeling ill and not being able to drink water, and being told she was lying. Several detailed the trauma they say they felt after their parents hired men to forcibly take them from their bedrooms in the middle of the night to transport them to the programs.
The negative attention the wilderness therapy industry has received has been “hard for programs to combat,” according to the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Council. Its members are wilderness therapy programs throughout the country; it was formed in 1996, partly in response to allegations of abuse and the deaths that were occurring at that time. The council says it has worked since then to implement best practices and standards for its member programs.
“The social media and news media climate around treatment programs has been one of the biggest challenges over the last several years,” the organization said in response to emailed questions, “and unfortunately, only one side of the story is being told so publicly.”
When families try to share their positive experiences, they’re often attacked online, the OBH Council said, and media reports have often not been objective or balanced.
The council said that people who have had a negative experience “need to be heard,” and added that it believes “their stories deserve to be told and at times change is needed and welcomed.”
But the council also noted that many of the stories recently shared in the media happened more than two decades ago — and that some of the questionable practices highlighted in those reports are what led to the formation of the OBH Council.
“The portrayal of programs today is not representative of what is actually happening in OBH programs today,” the group said. “There are unlicensed programs out there and there are programs that need to be closed if they do not adjust their practices and we support that they are being challenged.”
In advising parents, Glissmeyer said, “We encourage the media and any prospective families to seek out and speak to current or former families that are more than willing to share their life-changing and at times life-saving experiences.”
Empowered to speak out
There’s been a societal shift in recent years focusing on the need for programs to be transparent and to hold them accountable, said Meg Appelgate, CEO of Unsilenced, an advocacy group of former residents of teen treatment facilities. Many people who went to these programs have felt empowered to speak out in the wake of Paris Hilton’s 2020 documentary, Appelgate said, in which Hilton said she was abused at Utah’s Provo Canyon School.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paris Hilton in 2020 led a march to Provo Canyon School, a Utah residential treatment center she attended when she was a teen.
“What that did to survivors is that it let all of us know … that we can be heard, and that people care and that we matter,” Appelgate said. And the digital age, she said, has “really created more opportunities for us to not only be heard, but also just so many different ways that we could. So we’ve got TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, we’ve got the TTI [Troubled Teen Industry] Reddit. So many different avenues for us to be able to get our stories out there.”
And as more young people share these painful memories, Appelgate said, they’re connecting with a general public that has a better understanding of mental health and treatment than in years past.
“I think that, coupled with the sheer amount of stories and experiences that have flooded social media, … [has] really confronted this industry in a way that they really have nowhere to go.”
Some of those who have been in Utah programs more recently aren’t just sharing their personal accounts on social media — they’re taking their wilderness therapy program to court. In civil lawsuits filed in the last year, three young people have levied familiar accusations of mistreatment, the kind of abuse allegations that have plagued the industry since it became a popular treatment option in the 1990s.
Wingate Wilderness, which closed last August, was sued in 2022 by a former student who alleged he became chronically dehydrated about a week into his stay in 2021. He said he did not get medical care despite his condition deteriorating — resulting in him feeling disorientated, lethargic and suffering from abdominal pain. He ended up hospitalized for 10 days to treat his health conditions, which he alleges in his lawsuit were the result of “severe dehydration and lithium toxicity.” Wingate denied in a court filing it was negligent.
Two programs still in operation were sued last month. One former participant at Star Guides filed a lawsuit alleging staff forced her to drink unsanitary water, did not give her access to hygiene items and “sealed” her in her sleeping bag, surrounding it with rocks and logs in order to restrain her. The company has not filed an answer to the lawsuit, and there were no attorneys representing it listed in court records.
Another lawsuit was filed by a father who sued the transport service that handcuffed his daughter in a hotel room in Florida and took her to the Second Nature program in Utah. The lawsuit says the girl was sent there by her mother, and alleges that the wilderness program staff did not give her prescribed antidepressants, isolated her from her peers and did not allow her to access proper hygiene materials. Glissmeyer declined to comment on the suit.
All of these court cases are still pending.
‘They’re cornered’
White noted that a February death of a boy in a wilderness program in North Carolina also has made parents leery of sending their children to these types of programs, believing that they aren’t regulated or safe enough. (Every state has their own varying degrees of regulations and there are still no federal rules in place.)
He said some parents are also turned off by the “transport” tactic that many in the wilderness therapy industry used to advocate — a process where parent-hired transporters would surprise sleeping teenagers in their bedrooms and forcibly take them to a program.
“A lot of people see it as abhorrent,” he said. “At one time, some people in the field said, ‘Everybody should be transported. We’re going to take their power away.’ And I think some of the stories we hear from people who refer to themselves as ‘survivors’ [is that] it was traumatizing.”
Today, there are more options for shorter-term inpatient care for parents to choose from, and White said others are opting for an out-patient approach.
The OBH Council said increased rules and regulations in recent years have also contributed to higher costs, and some programs have struggled to adjust to decreasing bottom lines paired with less clientele.
The group said Utah programs appear to have been hit particularly hard with closures, but added that the industry is larger here compared to other states. One theme they have identified, they said, is that those that are closing now often are affiliated with large corporate or financial backers.
“It appears as though most of the programs that are able to remain open are owner-owned and operated,” they said, “and have owners that believe in this work deeply and are willing to reduce or completely forgo profits in order to remain in operation and continue serving families in need.”
White predicts wilderness therapy will continue — but will likely have to evolve again, as it did after the Great Recession. He said he believes programs that will succeed in this moment should be embracing regulation, and listening to the feedback of those who have had negative experiences — which the OBH Council said its programs are doing.
”A therapeutic environment in the outdoors should be available to all who choose and want to embrace it,” White said. Glissmeyer agrees. “Living in nature is [a] unique setting for clients to focus on their therapeutic goals: It is simple, beautiful, inspiring, peaceful, and also challenging. It is an incredible place from which to conduct family therapy and promote personal growth.”
But Appelgate said she believes the work by activists to shed light on alleged abusive tactics may end wilderness therapy altogether. “I don’t think it can survive,” she said. “I certainly hope it doesn’t.”
“We have them cornered,” she added, “with litigation and allegations and survivor stories and documentaries … And they’re at the end of their rope.”
