Wilderness Therapy, Therapeutic Camping and Adventure Education in Child and Youth Care Literature Journal Review

Alex Easey (00615334)

IDIS 3000

Dr. Tracy Penny Light

Oct. 26th 2018

 

A scoping review was designed to create an all-encompassing overview of literature around outdoor adventure in the child and youth care field. The intent of this was to approach the literature in a broad sense to create an analytical analysis of the scope of research and publishing done on a specific area in the field of child and youth care. Using specific metrics for inclusion and exclusion, of periodicals or papers, they came up with a total sum of 63 publications to review and create an assessment of.

“Locate and summarize the outdoor adventure approach in the literature of child and youth care, and summarize ïŹndings, describe the current state of research, and identify themes and gaps which may provide direction for child and youth care education, practice and research” (Harper, Pg. 70)

Their search followed five stages as set by Arksey and O’Malley in their 2005 work Scoping Studies: Towards A Methodological Framework, establishing a scoping review practice. These five stages are problem identification, identifying relevant publications, organizing and tabling all data, summarizing, interpreting and reporting of findings.  Their search terms were to find any related periodicals, specifically around child and youth, then to search through those periodicals along the terms of adventure, outdoors, nature, wilderness, camp, therapy and recreation, organizing those results into ones specifically related to their area of interest of adventure or wilderness therapy.
Table 3. Origin and distribution of publications included in review. 

Origin of publications United States Canada New Zealand Isreal Germany Singapore Netherlands
Number of publications 50(79%) 4(6%) 3(5%) 3(5%) 1(1.5%) 1(1.5%) 1(-1.5%)

Note: Reprinted from Wilderness Therapy, therapeutic camping and adventure education in child and youth care: a scoping review. (2017). Copyright Harper, N.J. & Elsevier Publishing.

The results from their search was 63 articles or research papers from sources vetted by the researchers themselves, all with specific relevance to the research at hand. Of these 63 sources, 3 categories emerged, wilderness and adventure therapy, therapeutic camping, adventure education and physical activity.

With 34 out of the 63 overall publications reviewed, Wilderness and adventure therapy was the largest factor of the research. The collection of articles were generally focused around techniques, motivations and implications of adventure and wilderness therapy. The publishing’s conceded on creation of a similar or typical archetype for a client of adventure and wilderness-based therapy. This was described as substance abusing and oppositional, with a large portion of self-harming behaviors and recent trauma. They added that females were more likely to have received prior outpatient care, while males were more likely to have had self-harming behavior. The end breakdown of these articles were a focuses amount of research on the benefits of adventure therapy, as well as few articles developing a scope of practice with direct implementation examples.

Therapeutic camping was identified as the second largest category of papers. These papers were built around camping as a residential treatment, camps addressing mental health issues, and camps for chronic illness or disabilities. Descriptions of therapeutic camping were overnight to residential facilities, encompassing activities such as hiking, canoeing, outdoor cooking and living. A majority of the papers highlighted specific focus in the therapeutic camping environment around pushing youth to address and overcome communication or behavioral obstacles, as well as identifying time away from day-to-day stress as in the natural environment as a core component of therapeutic camps. From there the individual articles differentiated, focusing on techniques or characteristics under their practice or within their scope of study. Two important or interesting notes for this research base was the uptake in creation of therapeutic programs that relied heavily on daily social interactions and maintenance of a community, as well as an implementation of an emotion detective prevention program in a number of camps that showed significant results in identifying and reducing stress and anxiety, but did not show any mitigation factors for depression symptoms. These two were the most cutting edge in terms of creativity of programming in relation to therapy processing in a camp setting.

Finally, adventure education and physical activity was identified as the third category for these publications, a total of 10 publications of the 63 were related directly to outdoor education and 2 to physical activity. “Adventure education is described in the literature reviewed as novel outdoor activities that are challenging, experiential, and facilitated in a way to meet a certain developmental outcome.” (Harper, 2017, Pg. 75). The gross sum of these articles was a designation of adventure education as a powerful medium for adolescent development. One of the standout pieces of literature from this category was a study by Mutz and Muller Mental health benefits of outdoor adventure: Results from two pilot studies. This study focused on two trips, a 9-day trip for 14-year old’s, and an 8-day trip for undergrad university students. “The researchers found positive benefits including reduced time pressure and mental stress, and increased self-efficacy, mindfulness and overall subjective levels of wellbeing in both age groups.” (Harper, 2017, Pg. 75). The overall scope of this section was the increase in acceptance and use of phsyical programming within the child and youth care sphere, as well as suggesting “clinicians who work with at-risk youth to consider including or developing programs with physical activity to support health and social-emotional interventions” (Harper, 2017, Pg. 76)

In the conclusion of this scoping review, several key factors are brought up, and have been narrowed down as most relevant to the current body of research and inclusion into the current stance of findings. The researchers divide their overall findings into 3 categories, therapeutic camping and its roots in CYC, adventure education and physical activity: everyday CYC practice, and wilderness therapy as wilderness therapy as residential treatment, as well as several other important concepts in their conclusionary findings and notes. One of these concepts is the breadth of overall literature in the Child and Youth Care spectrum, acknowledging the “dispersion of literature may prevent consistent sharing of knowledge across disciplines” (Harper, 2017, Pg. 76) as well as what the author called the “death of Canadian OA literature in CYC” (Haper, 2017, Pg.76). They state this because of their findings, with only four publications meeting their inclusion criteria, while holding the knowledge that outdoor adventure (OA) is of similar scope within Canada as to the United states. “A similar history of program development and practice ideology exists in North America yet Canadian literature as research, conceptual/theoretical developments or program descriptions is scarce” (Harper, 2017, Pg. 76).

Wilderness therapy as residential treatment is the most prominent category and of the most importance to the current scope of research. This section concludes that the majority of studies propose unwavering support to wilderness therapy, while conceding that residential programs have long been a source of debate in both wilderness therapy and child and youth care literature. A valuable point put forward is the effect complete removal of an individual into a care facility or adventure program and the impact that has, as well as how this needs to be carefully monitored and assessed within the importance of the residential program in itself.

“Suggestions for future research include: (1) to review the historical confluence of CYC and OA to inform practice, (2) to increase the quantity of qualitative studies to temper the dominance of clinical outcomes research and increase comprehension of OA process mechanisms; (3) to ascertain where OA approaches serve as valued components of a ‘continuum of care’ for children, youth, and families, and (4) to explore cross-cultural understandings of OA in CYC.” (Harper, N. J., 2017)

The author ends the research paper with a call to future researchers and a list of potential areas for future research, inciting the specific areas of interest in child and youth literature that, after assessment and a scoping review of the literature, need to be further developed, questioned and studied.

 

Reference

Harper N. J. (2017). Wilderness Therapy, Therapeutic Camping and Adventure Education in Child and Youth Care Literature. Children and Youth services Review, 83, 68-79. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.10.30