Stories from the Field: Mental Health and the Outdoors

Dr. Justine O'Donnell is a psychologist who specializes in performing neuropsychological evaluations for young people while they are enrolled in wilderness therapy programs.  Justine started her journey into the wilderness therapy field as a field guide at SUWS of Idaho.  When she started at SUWS field guides would go out into the field for three weeks at a time.  She shares her story of being a f...

Anngela Wells Starnes is the Director of Admissions and Marketing for Q and A Associates in West Virginia.  Anngela's entry into the wilderness therapy field started as a child for her father, Larry Wells, was one of the pioneers in the primitive skills model of wilderness therapy.  Angela worked at Expedition Outreach as a teen and Wilderness Quest as an adult after taking several years away from...

Tracey Bachrach is the Director of Business Development at Point School, Puerto Rico. Tracey entry into the wilderness field started when she as a field guide at SUWS of the Carolina's. She worked at SUWS for over four years, which translates into two years living in the outdoors. She encourages young people interested in the wilderness field to find a program in an area where they want to live an...

Margie Lannon is Co-Founder of Onward Transitions a young adult transition program located in Portland, Maine. Margie had worked for 26 years in the wilderness field. She started as field staff on wagon trains that crossed the country and transitioned to being a program director on tall-ships that crossed the ocean with inner-city youth when she worked at VisionQuest. She would transition to Summi...

Lily Wilkinson is the Outreach Director of Aim House in Boulder, CO. Lily's entry into the wilderness field occurred when she was eighteen years old and enrolled in a wilderness therapy program which she says, "saved my life."  Lily describes her journey of growing up in a supportive family yet struggling with crippling anxiety.  She developed several maladaptive coping skills, which resulted in n...

Audrey Peavey is Outreach Director at Potomac Program. Audrey's entry into the field occurred in 2001 when a friend of hers asked her to be the admissions director of New Horizons for Young Women. New Horizons for Young Women was a wilderness program located in Maine that worked exclusively with girls ages 13-18. Audrey worked at the program from the day it opened in 2000 to the day it closed in 2...

Angie Shockley is the founder of Q & A Associates, located in Davis, West Virginia. Q & A Associates has three different programs that help young adults who have struggled to sustain a productive and positive transition into adulthood. Angie began working in the field in the mid-1990s at an adjudicated boys program in West Virginia. She became disenchanted in the state-run program and joined Alldr...

Mary Hickey is a parent coach at Parent Coaching Professionals and Second Nature Wilderness. Her journey into the field started as a child at summer camp and progressed at Prescott College in the 1990s, where she first learned about wilderness therapy.  Mary began working in the field in 1997 at WildernessQuest. She recounts the primitive skills orientation of WildernessQuest and how she became a...

Sarah Mack is Director of Parent Coaching at Second Nature Wilderness Therapy. She has been a leader in the field for over 25 years.  For the majority of her career in wilderness therapy, she worked at Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy, which she joined in 1994.  Sarah recounts the history of Catherine Freer Wilderness, including its unique model, her role in the executive team, its contributions...

Heidi Strand is Executive Director at Lake House Academy in North Carolina. Heidi worked for more than 20 years as a professional in organized camping including Girl Scout camps as well as being the director of several summer camps. She found her first job in the field as the Executive Director at New Visions Wilderness field via Facebook. Heidi believes strongly in cultivating mentors in the fiel...

Patricia Ruggles, LCPC, is a Therapeutic Consultant at Mason and Associates. Trish has been working in the wilderness therapy field for over 15 years in a variety of positions including field staff, team leader, and therapist.  She has worked all over the country, including Oregon, New York, and Maine. Her advice to women interested in the field is to "be curious, be open, and be brave." Trish sha...

Mike Petree, Founder of Petree Consulting, which helps wilderness therapy programs do evidenced-based research by teaching effective ways to collect data and review outcomes.     Mike shares his story on how in 1999 he and his wife, Bekkah, who both had high paying jobs decided to respond to a help-wanted ad for wilderness therapy field guides and shortly after that received a VCR cassette. The vi...

Bryan Delaney, Program director at SUWS of the Carolinas, has been working in the outdoors with adolescents since he was a young man. Much of his early outdoor training was in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and he would go onto become an Eagle Scout as a teen.  In college he worked for several years at the BSA's world's largest summer camp, Philmont Scout Ranch, and was offered a full time job th...

Paul Wolf is the Director of the Outdoor Leadership and Wilderness Therapy Program at Southwestern Community College located in Sylva, North Carolina. This program is the only one in the nation that provides a certificate in wilderness therapy for those interested in working as field staff. Paul helped developed the certificate program and has been the director and mentoring students for over 18 y...

Bill Brown is the Co-founder and Family Services Director of Confluence which is a wilderness therapy program for young adults located in Thetford Center, Vermont.  Bill and his brother, Patrick, founded the program in 2016 to be a hybrid wilderness program with a focus only on emerging adults (age 18-28). Bill shares his story of working as a field staff and field director for almost half a decad...

Robert Trout is the founder and director of The Experiential Healing Institute which is an organization that provides f amily support before, during and after treatment when a family member is in a wilderness therapy program.  Robert was a student in a wilderness program as a teen and went onto work as a clinician in wilderness therapy programs in different programs. Robert's journey into the fiel...

David Koortis is a former wilderness therapy field guide at several programs including Summit Achievement and Second Nature who went onto start Good To-Go foods which makes the best lightweight dehydrated gourmet meals in the world. David shares the story of his time as a wilderness therapy guide and what he learned from his time working in the field. He recounts how he met the amazing chef, Jenni...

Dr. Sandy Newes is a researcher, practitioner and trainer in the wilderness therapy. She has been active in the field for over twenty years and currently provides psychological testing for participants in wilderness therapy programs as well as training services for guide staff via Peak Performance Training which she co-founded.  Sandy shares her journey into the field from her travels around the c...

Mark Synnott is an amazing athlete, writer and father of four. His newest book," The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan and The Climbing Life" has just been published and is a must read for those interested in adventure and an outdoor life.  Mark's book delves deep into the history of climbing, free climbing as well as Honnold's historic free climb of El Capitan (seen in the 2019 Oscar win...

Reid Treadaway, Co-founder and Admissions Director of BlueFire Wilderness Therapy, started working in the wilderness therapy field in 1996 at the Ascent Program, in Idaho, as a field guide.  After several years he moved onto being a admissions person and eventually would move to North Carolina in 2001 to become admissions director for SUWS of the Carolina.  After a few years in North Carolina he d...

Jesse Quam, educational consultant and clinical social worker, started working in the wilderness therapy field after landing a job at Aspen Achievement Academy as a field instructor in 1996.  Jesse shares stories about his upbringing in which his father was a pastor and the family traveled all over the country providing services to those in need which influenced Jesse to start a life of service. J...

Dr. Mike Gass is a Professor in the Outdoor Education Program in the Department of Kinesiology at University of New Hampshire as well as the Director of the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Center.  Mike shares his journey of being recruited to play college football at St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, to becoming one of the foremost researchers and teachers in the field of wilderness/adventure therapy...

Misty Blakesley is a Program Manager at The Mountain Center (previously called the Santa Fe Mountain Center) a non-profit community based educational and therapeutic organization that, since 1979, has been dedicated to promoting personal discovery and social change among youth, families and groups through the use of creative learning experiences in wilderness, community and cultural environments. ...

Will talks with Rick Heizer and Dr. Matt Hoag, Co-Owners and Co-Founders of Evoke Therapy Programs. Rick is the Executive Director at Evoke Therapy Programs while Matt is the Clinical Director of and Therapist at Evoke Entrada.  These long time practitioners of wilderness therapy share their journey from working at different wilderness programs to co-founding Evoke Therapy Programs in 2014.

Will interviews Gil Hallows and Derek Daley who co-founded Legacy Outdoor Adventures after working many years in the wilderness therapy field.  Gil had been executive director of Aspen Achievement Academy from 1996 until it closed in 2011.  He tells his story of the day that he was told Aspen Achievement Academy was going to be closed by the company and how he responded by starting Legacy Outdoor...