Wilderness Camp for Troubled Youth

WinGate Wilderness Therapy is a premier wilderness camp for troubled youth. The program is designed to help struggling teens deal with anxiety, depression, addiction, sexual acting out, academic failure, interpersonal conflicts, unhealthy family dynamics, and many other issues. WinGate's wilderness camp for troubled youth provides a safe space for adolescents to gain the support they need to grow and heal.

WinGate is not a boot camp or scared straight program. Instead, it is a wilderness camp designed to support troubled youth as they work through issues of self-confidence, effective communication, and healthy coping skills. WinGate offers hope in the face of struggle and hardship, focusing on development and healing in a positive environment promoting growth, rather than initiating punitive measures or consequences.

What is Wilderness Therapy?

Wilderness therapy is a form of treatment utilizing experiential therapy, assessment, and intervention. Using the wilderness as the setting and container for therapy provides an environment of cause and effect, challenge, and growth. Wilderness students must learn to work hard and move with the environment and their group to gain the most benefit and experience the most growth.

While enrolled at WinGate Wilderness Therapy, students learn social skills, effective communication, listening skills, the value of hard work, and the reward of overcoming challenging situations. Wilderness therapy provides a unique setting for self-discovery, as well as a singular opportunity to gain self-confidence and learn healthy coping skills.

What is a Wilderness Therapy Camp?

Wilderness therapy camp is not a destination but a way of living and growing in a supportive therapeutic environment. Students live in the wilderness environment for the duration of their enrollment. There is always highly trained field staff providing support and guidance for the individual and group 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, a therapist visits each group twice a week, facilitating group and individual sessions.

Wilderness therapy provides an environment of immediate feedback for the troubled youth enrolled at WinGate. For example, if a student works hard and creates adequate shelter, they stay dry when it rains. However, if they fail to do so or cut corners, they get wet during a rainstorm. As a result, troubled youth learn skills that immediately benefit their lives and provide a solid foundation upon which they can rebuild their lives outside of the wilderness therapy program.

Learning to live within a group allows students to be a part of something larger than themselves. It also creates an opportunity to seek help and support and offer service, support, and experience to the peer group.

Wilderness Camp for Teens

WinGate's wilderness camp for teens creates a unique therapeutic environment that is dynamic, creative, and full of opportunities for growth and healing. WinGate students learn to be self-sufficient and accountable and how to exist in a larger community or group. Every day is full of opportunities and challenges for troubled youth to grow and support others.

WinGate's wilderness camp for teens is the optimal treatment program for troubled youth to gain confidence and do hard things. During treatment, teens learn how to succeed, grow, gain healthy coping skills, and be a part of a healthy community while being supported by industry-leading field staff and therapists. Teens at WinGate have both a peer mentor and a staff mentor to help guide them along their therapeutic journey.

Life at WinGate's wilderness camp for teens includes backpacking, shelter building, primitive skills development, group/community building, individual sessions, group sessions, one-on-one interaction with staff and therapists, and countless growth and personal development opportunities.

WinGate's daily programming provides structure and routine that allows students to grow, heal, and succeed. Everyday goal setting, intentional interventions, and group processing create an optimal environment for self-discovery and individualized success.