Nonprofit explains its program as new movie casts spotlight on wilderness therapy

UTAH COUNTY — As a new movie shot in Utah and set to release this Friday was poised to place the spotlight on wilderness therapy programs. On Thursday, one program explained its approach and how it has helped thousands of young people and their relationships with their families.

According to its online synopsis, “The Wilderness” is the story of a group of troubled teens forced into a “brutal and secretive” wilderness therapy program, where the motives of the program’s director are “far from therapeutic.”

“I’ve only seen the trailer,” said Michael Merchant, board chair of the nonprofit Anasazi Foundation. “There have been documentaries, there have been other things similar to that that really kind of painted a picture of wilderness therapy as really harsh, take children out into the wilderness, break them down to build them up in some way. There’s marching in the middle of the night, and all kinds of contrived adventures that you would build into it to try and facilitate some sort of change in young people, and that’s not our program. That’s not what we do.”

The potential of good wilderness therapy

Merchant instead described a program focused on walking in the wilderness with licensed clinicians. Those clinicians and staff walk the same distances as those in the program and they eat the same food.

“They’re in a place free from clutter, noise, conflict, [and] social media where they can actually feel again, they can actually see again,” Merchant said. “They can actually begin to consider their lives and where they want to go.”

According to information provided by the organization, Anasazi has helped over 5,000 families and has experienced no deaths or serious injuries in 37 years. The group maintains more than 80 percent of families report improved relationships.

Ryan Treft said his family took him to Arizona and entered him into the program when he was 13-years-old.

“I was getting into trouble, and my parents didn’t know what to do,” he told KSL TV.

Treft said he never felt forced or coerced while he was in the program, but he said it was “tough,” and it helped him to reframe his thinking around what he wanted to do with his life.

“Anasazi has a pretty radical philosophy of non-coercion—it’s very pro-love, pro-responsibility,” said Treft, now the CEO of an online business. “It’s common to paint all wilderness programs with this broad brush as if they have the same tactics, the same approach, the same philosophy and I’m willing to tell anybody and everybody that my experience at Anasazi is far from what I hear goes in in other programs.”

Merchant said he and the Anasazi Foundation had also pushed over the years for greater industry accountability and standards that include accreditation and independently licensed clinicians.

“When you have a therapist who has a license of their own that’s on the line, there’s accountability in that,” Merchant said. “They’re not about to make a decision or do something in that program where they would lose a license and impact their career in a significant way.”

Both Treft and Merchant acknowledged “bad apples” in the industry that have drawn headlines.

“There are some tragic stories out there from other programs, but it’s not reflective at all of my experience,” Treft said. “I reflect on it every single day of my life and it changed my life. It absolutely changed my life.”

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