Author: FOTIS PANAGIOTOUNIS

How Wilderness Therapy Works: An Examination of the Wilderness Therapy Process to Treat Adolescents with Behavioral Problems and Addictions.   This paper summarizes findings from a detailed study of the processes employed by four leading wilderness therapy programs focusing on how wilderness therapy works, the kinds of behavioral problems to which it is commonly applied, […]

  Reaching for Roots and Finding a Forest In January 2015 the Belgian organization NATURE decided to invite a group of experiential educators and adventure therapists from seven other European countries to dream and talk about starting a European partnership project on Adventure Therapy together. They wanted to work together in the search for the […]

Therapy in the open air: Introducing wilderness therapy to adolescent mental health services in Scandinavia.   Despite the rich traditions of outdoor life in the Scandinavian countries, structured nature-based therapeutic interventions remain underexplored in adolescent mental health services. We suggest that wilderness therapy is an age-appropriate and effective group treatment that may hold particular appeal […]

Treatment Effectiveness of Wilderness Adventure Therapy This document is a summary of key results from a more detailed report of a comprehensive evaluation of a therapeutic adventure-based intervention for adolescents and families termed “Wilderness Adventure Therapy” (WAT)   Read more…

The Use of Adventure Therapy Techniques by Clinical Social Workers: Implications for Practice and Training Adventure therapy, an experiential intervention that combines outdoor, adventure based activities and group process, is used in direct practice by clinical social workers; however, it is unclear to what extent clinical social workers are actually utilizing these techniques. read more…  […]

Adventure Therapy Effects on Self-concept – A Meta-analysis Self-concept change has been proposed as a key driver of behavioral change through adventure therapy (Hans, 2000). Through exploratory moderator analysis we tried to identify process variables that influence the effect of adventure therapy on self-concept to contribute to a deeper understanding of why and when adventure […]