The Satir Journal, Vol.2, No.3, 2008
ISSN – 1718-2050 (print)
ISSN – 1718-2069 (online)

Adventure-Based Therapy with At-Risk Youth Using the Satir Model

Klaus Klein, M.A., R.C.C.
Parent and Teen Counsellor, Vancouver, B.C.
Business website
Take-A-Hike Program Website:

Abstract

The Take-A-Hike (TAH) program accepts at-risk teens who wish to finish their high school education here on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Many of the teen population who have come to the Adventure-Based Therapy Program have had struggles with the mainstream high school education system. Some of the common behavioural issues are truancy, dropping out of school, conflict with teachers and peers, lack of interest and motivation, poor academic performance, and drug and alcohol abuse.

The TAH program has four main components: academic, outdoor adventure-based learning, life skills course and therapy. For the therapy component, the students meet with me individually, in groups, or sometimes with their parents or other family members. Therapeutic work is done both in a conventional setting using a private office at the school and in outdoor wilderness settings on multi-day camping trips. The industry name for doing therapy in the outdoors is called Adventure-Based Therapy (ABT). In either setting the Satir Model is used to work with the students to promote healthy change.

During multi-day wilderness camping, these students experience life and themselves in a whole new way. Leaving the comforts and familiarity of what they are used to will create a certain level of stress.  Students on the camping trip rely on coping stances such as blaming, placating, super-reasonable, and irrelevant, much like being in a family system when out on our multi-day camping trips. The coping stances get played out in particular within the student food groups that have been set up as triads before the camping trips begins. Students are put into groups of three which remain the same working unit for the duration of the trip.

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