Therapeutic Methods

Our mission

It is our mission to provide the most engaging and effective Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare treatment program for adolescents. Change happens when one feels safe, inspired, and confident to make one’s life their own. We believe it’s our responsibility to create this environment while empowering our clients through open and honest dialogue, and concrete resources.

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What is Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare?

Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare (OBH), also referred to as wilderness therapy or adventure therapy, is often an alternative treatment approach for adolescents with co-occurring mental health conditions. A key feature of OBH is “the prescriptive use of wilderness experiences by licensed mental health professionals to meet the therapeutic needs of clients”

The main components of OBH include:

Extended backcountry travel and wilderness living experiences
Active and direct use of clients’ participation and responsibility
Continual group living and regular formal group therapy sessions to foster teamwork and social interactions
Individual therapy sessions, supported by the inclusion of family therapy
Adventure experiences utilized to enhance treatment by fostering the development of eustress (ie, the positive use of stress) as a beneficial element in the therapeutic experience
The use of nature in reality as a metaphor within the therapeutic process and
A strong ethic of care and support throughout the therapeutic experience

Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare has been shown to be a more successful mental health intervention than “treatment as usual”, such as outpatient services. One study comparing OBH with treatment as usual found treatment gains from one-year post treatment were three times larger in the OBH group.

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Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or DBT, is a powerful multi-modal
treatment approach that Elements uses to address the extreme emotional
intensity and dysregulation that many of our students struggle with.
It’s this intense emotionality that often leads to angry, destructive
or counterproductive behaviors. DBT emphasizes personal responsibility
and helps our students examine how they deal with conflict and
negative feelings. The goals of our DBT program include identifying
maladaptive coping patterns and providing students with adaptive
coping strategies to promote healthier behaviors and psychological
well-being. DBT combines the basic strategies of cognitive-behavioral
therapy with mindfulness practices. DBT calls on students to accept
current reality while maintaining a strong and conscious commitment to
change. DBT has also been modified so that it can be used with other
difficulties such as substance use, self-harm and anger management.
DBT targets the issues that cause distress and teaches skills to deal
with them without having to resort to self-defeating behaviors. It
does so in a structured framework that helps us understand that, on
the one hand, we are doing the best we can and, on the other hand,
even though we can and need to learn better ways of dealing with
challenges.

Specific DBT foci include:

Mindfulness: Focusing the mind, directing attention and understanding how you feel.
Emotional Regulation: Reducing emotional intensity that can lead to impulsivity and destructive behaviors.
Distress Tolerance: Reducing impulsivity and managing personal crises.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Keeping relationships steady, getting what is needed and maintaining your self-respect.

Seven Challenges

Elements uses the Seven Challenges approach to address all levels of drug or alcohol involvement—from experimentation to addiction. We have found this approach particularly useful in dealing with adolescent substance abuse because it does not depend upon “hitting rock bottom,” is not shame-based and can work with any level of abuse. It can also be used in a complementary fashion with other more traditional chemical dependency and addictions treatments. Because the majority of young men struggling with emotional and behavioral issues have engaged in some form of substance abuse, the Seven Challenges is a central aspect of our programming and is useful for both treatment and prevention.