Lets talk about the problems with Outward Bound
Conversations about TTI, the "Troubled teen industry" are not complete without considering Outward Bound, a nonprofit that has mostly escaped criticisms of tough love and wilderness therapy programs
It’s funny, there has been this dichotomy in my life lately that I’m enjoying a lot of success and freedom since wrapping up my degree last March. With more free time than I have enjoyed in years, I’ve felt like I have a new lease on life: time for reading, pottery classes, and traveling. Without school monopolizing my schedule as it did so many years the rest of my thirties stretches in front of me full of fun and possibility.
Although I’m spending a lot of time looking ahead, I’ve also spent a bit more than normal looking back. I found a bunch of journals from my childhood and teen years organizing my house a few months back and have been slowly making my way through them. This week, an episode from my favorite podcast coincided with a specific journal and had me fall down the internet rabbit hole that exists on the topic of TTI, the troubled teen industry.
Prior to this week if you would have told me I had anything in common with Paris Hilton you would have been met with incredulity. Did Outward Bound even count as TTI? I wondered, once I heard the term.
In this week’s newsletter I’ll dive into my experience and why after reflection on this topic with adult eyes, my answer is a resounding: Yes.
(As a sidebar, sometimes my family seems annoyed at my lack of decorum bluntly discussing things from my upbringing or “airing dirty laundry”. In my opinion, my silence on things I know were wrong does nothing but give comfort to people who behaved badly. In the case of Outward Bound, I was stunned to find in my research of this topic that this organization has managed to almost entirely dodge valid criticism of TTI that should also be squarely aimed at them. So, yeah - I don’t write because I am the biggest or most sympathetic victim of TTI (kids have literally died), I write because I can, I feel like it, and even if it's just my silly voice on this topic and no one is listening, Outward Bound deserves to have this said about them, publicly, by someone. )
Until uncovering a certain corner of the internet that spoke more plainly, the online presence of Outward Bound is miraculously sanitized into something that seems a universe away from TTI. While I will be careful to note my experience does not touch that of Paris Hilton or others, in my opinion, the troubled teen programs run past and present by Outward Bound are unequivocally TTI and carry with them the inadequacies of that whole category of programs.
So buckle up, let’s get into it.
TTI: The basics
In falling down the research rabbit hole on this topic, I was honestly stunned to find out that TTI programs were both older than I realized, and ongoing. My assumption was that it was some early-2000s-era Dr. Phil-fueled fever dream we would have long since moved past as a society.
Nope!
Although specific bad actors have closed or been shut down, the troubled teen industry is older and stronger than I realized. It was championed by people like Nancy Reagan, and some even consider the genocidal assimilation camps indigenous kids were sent to to erase their culture and whitewash them as the earliest prototype of TTI-style programs.
The gist is that often teenagers identified to have some flaw or be “at risk” are removed from their environment. Sometimes this is done by the “teen escort” industry of businesses, who are essentially paid kidnappers. They cuff and drive the problem children to some destination, sometimes out in nature, sometimes a school, far from family, friends, and “bad influences”.
(If you think this is a punishment reserved for serious cases, kids in juvie or actively using drugs, you would be wrong. Some of the literature takes great pains to stress that kids with attitude problems, kids you even SUSPECT may have some issue in the future, are perfectly fine candidates for any parent with enough money and anxiety to purchase one of these options.)
Once in their new environment, these programs rely on a mix of measures to ensure docility, compliance, and “reform” in their charges. Techniques used are a broad spectrum and may include:
wilderness exposure
counseling (some more legitimate, some less so)
being “unplugged” (no phone, internet, or letters)
severe restriction of autonomy and privileges
heightened supervision, including during bathroom usage
coerced self-policing, giving certain children rewards for ratting out peers for any rule violations
isolation
verbal and physical abuse (this accounts for some deaths)
neglect, such as deprivation of food, sleep, or medical care (this accounts for some other deaths)
A lot of these programs talk about a “reset” like these children are alarm clocks. Like the human psyche and causes for teen misbehavior are so simple and binary to reverse. At this point in my life, I have seen enough to know that people are very naive about boldly stated, simplistic solutions because they are comforting. Yes, it’s so simple! Fresh air, no devices, separation from all those bad influence friends. Far too many parents buy this ridiculous premise hook, line, and sinker.
Formal definitions of TTI and the sneaky way Outward Bound tries to dodge the label
To anyone reading who may be familiar with Outward Bound, you may be saying “wait wait wait, I know someone who went to Outward Bound in Costa Rica! John’s a nature enthusiast and had a lovely time. What on earth are you talking about?”
The reason Outward Bound has dodged this label is that it DOES offer non-punitive wilderness “experiences” that people sign up for voluntarily. It isn’t even exclusively focused on teens. The majority of Outward Bound programs are neither punitive nor targeted at “problem” teens, and for this reason, the reputation of the org has remained relatively unscathed even as in recent years TTI has faced increased attention and scrutiny.
Cathy Krebs of the American Bar Association defines TTI programs as:
A network of private youth programs, therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, religious academies, wilderness programs, and drug rehabilitation centers
Outward Bound IS “wilderness experiences”, so given that they have programs for “troubled teens”, you’d think that cleanly aligns to the definition. But Outward bound describes itself as a leading provider of “outdoor education”. On their “Intercept” program specifically (the one for troubled teens) they phrase it:
Outward Bound's Intercept program is for families with teens who are facing challenging circumstances and need a reset. Intercept expeditions are specifically designed to help youth disrupt their routines and to discover tools for communication and self-advocacy, positive decision-making, and strengthening interpersonal relationships.
So it’s a “reset”, an “expedition”. Suuuuuuure. Except it is clearly a product completely targeted to troubled teens. Look at these website headings and subheadings, “rebellious”, “troubled”, “at-risk”. It’s TTI.
Ironically, the MOST legitimate camouflage Outward Bound has to claim that it is not in fact part of the TTI industry is that its “counselors” have no therapeutic credentials.
Card-carrying wilderness therapy programs include actual therapy, as explained here. Although Outward Bound absolutely mandates “therapeutic” themed activities during its Intercept program, the staff (“counselors”) leading these teenagers have absolutely no valid therapeutic training or credentials of any kind.
Outward Bound literature on Intercept describes the program as administering “reality therapy” and makes explicit reference to “counseling”, although elsewhere in their own literature they also state:
Outward Bound Instructors are experts in facilitation, group relationships, technical skills and wilderness travel. They are not licensed mental health professionals. They do not report to a clinical staff, nor do they consult with therapists or physicians outside of the medical screening and application process.
So the bottom line here:
Yes, Intercept is in the vein of wilderness therapy TTI programs, the only pretext it has to claim otherwise is that its staff are even LESS qualified than those programs would have.
The other elements are virtually indistinguishable. While the counselors have no formal mental health or therapeutic training, they absolutely pretend to administer therapy-adjacent wisdom related to conflict management, goal setting, managing emotions, healthy communication, specific family dynamics the teens are facing, on and on.
If you have any impression that Outward Bound differs from other TTI programs in that it is more voluntary or less punitive, you would also be wrong. This leads me to my own experience there, which was a) absolutely punitive and involuntary, and b) contained with it severe consequences for not attending or completing the program.
My experience with Outward Bound
I was sent to a month-long intercept program in 2004 when I was 14. My brother (12) was simultaneously sent to a non-Intercept sailing program that summer for two weeks. That I was deemed the “at risk” of us two is laughable, since within a year my brother would be expelled from school for dealing pot and I would be, idk just a normal punk-ass kid. Doing bad things of course, but also a cheerleader and on the honor roll, a perfectly averagely rebellious teenager. I had never been suspended, expelled, or gotten into trouble with the law. (I point this out to say, Outward Bound literature makes it sound like there is some huge counseling and suitability review to get children into these programs, but there was absolutely not. If there had been, why wouldn’t my brother have been routed to Intercept? And also if any of it worked long-term, how would my brother have been in so much trouble a scant year later?)
It was clearly a punishment and clearly punitive from the get-go even if Outward Bound denies that framing. If I did not complete the program my punishment was going to be being pulled out of school and homeschooled. If I completed the program, my “reward” was that I would be taken back to school shopping for clothes. (As an adult, I’m like ? my parents should just have bought me clothing for school, how is that a reward?) Outward bound was aware of this. My parents did a mountain of paperwork and there’s a whole family workbook during the kid’s absence.
The punishment and so-called reward would have been completely known to Outward Bound. They are fully aware kids are there coercively and not voluntarily.
So yes, I was not handcuffed in the dead of night and driven somewhere but I was coerced into this program, I would have done anything to avoid being homeschooled by my mom who I hated.
The crime that got me to Outward Bound was a mix of “bad attitude” and falling grades. I was soon after diagnosed with ADHD which explains some of both of those things. The truth was, my family situation wasn’t great and I acted out as a result. The following year, we would find out my mother had a b-cluster personality disorder and my father would divorce her and win full custody of us due to her abusive behavior towards multiple family members but primarily me. With her out of my life, grades went back up and behavior went entirely back to normal. The rest of my high school years were relatively uneventful and I graduated early and even completed an optional occupational focus area certification on top of my core curriculum.
I will stop here to say, prior to this week I would not have even confidently said Outward Bound fell into TTI. I certainly wasn’t abused or anything like that, the program kept me safe. It seems almost…tame? But after mulling it all over, there was enough that was dysfunctional about this experience that I’m still comfortable with my conclusion that yes, Outward Bound Intercept is a TTI program and it is at a minimum useless and maximum harmful even without abuse or neglect.
So let’s dive in.
At 14, I was by far the youngest and most innocent member of my group. I only clearly remember three other girls there (I won’t use full names for privacy). 17-year-old “J” from Indianapolis, in for having a relationship with a 34-year-old man. “A” from Hollywood, Florida, in for counterfeiting money and stealing and crashing a go kart into the ocean. “S”, from Colorado, a pale redheaded girl with clear goth vibes who was in for self-harm. I think they outright laughed in my face when we all went around stating our reasons for coming to the program and all I had to offer was “bad attitude”.
Although I was the youngest, I didn’t experience bullying or anything like that. In terms of interpersonal drama, there was actually little to nothing that went on during this trip. I don’t remember anyone getting in trouble with our counselors, or fighting with one another.
Our counselors were 20 and 23, a round-faced girl named Sarah and a traditionally pretty blonde named Christine. They were perfectly nice to all of us and robustly, annoyingly outdoorsy. I now know that in addition to making only $3 an hour in this line of work, they had zero valid counseling credentials for the topics they administered on conflict resolution or managing our emotions.
Even without knowing that, they ran aground with me during the counseling fairly fast. During the family topics, I told them I didn’t think my mom should call me a b@#$% during our arguments and that I also didn’t think she should blame her marital problems on me putting “strain” on my parents’ marriage. Both criticisms were so abundantly reasonable it was clear the counselors didn’t have anywhere to go in our discussions. While they were forced to be diplomatic and couldn’t condemn my mothers behavior, it was very clear to me that they realized how objectionable it was and weren’t going to say otherwise.
Even at 14 you have the flavor of conversational lulls and awkward silences, and when I raised those two points about my mom there was a conspicuous silence as I sensed the counselors mulling over this information and choosing their response carefully. In the catty way teenage girls are excellent at sussing out social and power dynamics, I clearly remember thinking: aha. They know it isn’t right how she acts. But because the program's focus is on whole family health, supposedly, they could not actively speak against my mom. I think the strongest statement I got was “that isn’t ok” about her behavior. The mildest of rebukes, but I stored it away as validation.
There WERE topics that I consider valid in the mix, but I already knew them. It was not my first rodeo, my family had been in therapy! They brought up things like not name calling during fights, using “I” statements and emotion language. I told them I already was aware of and used those techniques. My mom was an absolutely terrifying woman, no one in my household would have dared call her ANY name in a conflict. The nuggets of good advice in the “therapy” were known quantities to me.
I also completely stonewalled the other therapy topics such as self-improvement. When forced to make personal goals for the trip, which was part of the “therapy”, I said things like “get ankles from all the hiking” since I have chronically chubby legs and always hated the lack of definition there. It was clear again the counselors couldn’t call my goal stupid but that it sent a clear enough message that I was not buying into the whole wilderness-manufactured-epiphany premise. I never got in trouble and could sense an undercurrent of sympathy from the counselors, but again: they were unqualified to be there, and I was frankly unqualified to have been sent there. Neither party had anywhere to go and instead just went through the motions.
(Looking at this as an adult, teenage girls are terrifying. I mean I know my memory is fallible but if I had been in their shoes and had this teen just completely unphased, totally had their number, not playing the game at all, basically telling me they were there solely because of an abusive parent, I would have felt caught on uneven footing.)
Another aside: reviewing Outward Bound literature this week it was also so striking, people who buy into the cult would say “oh you didn’t have a good experience because of your attitude! You get out what you put into it!” and its like…no shit I had a bad attitude? I was put there under threat of being homeschooled away from all my friends. Even to a fourteen-year-old the entire premise was laughably hokey and juvenile. No, I did not get anything out of it. Get real lmao.)
While individual PEOPLE did not behave abusively to me in this program, I have a few points of reflection that do make me consider the entire premise and structure of it something wrong to do to children. Some of this gets gross so feel free to skim or stop on that basis.
The first issue is that the “wilderness skills” we were supposed to be developing were not competently taught. At that point in my life, I had an undiagnosed thyroid problem and was often cold, I would wear soccer socks to school under my jeans for that reason. The trip, canoeing and portaging through the 10000 lakes region of Minnesota, was freezing. For the first several nights I was so cold at night I couldn’t sleep or slept fitfully. I was bundled up in every piece of clothing I owned with other clothing balled up around me in my sleeping bag like a little hamster nest. I wasn’t told until several days in that I needed to wear LESS clothing for the heat-reflective material of the sleeping bag to reflect my heat back to me.
I know it isn’t Outward Bound’s fault that no one knew I had a thryoid problem including me, but the level of physical discomfort for me did border on pain. Morning drills we had to do in the cold waters around rescue and swimming were excruciating for me. I consider that very unnecessary for me to have gone through. And it is baked into the entire premise of the program(s): they take you extreme places, the woods, the desert, the mountains. Some nonzero number of kids are going to have conditions they don’t even know about that make these experiences literally painful for them. What kind of gamble is that to take?
While kids getting exercise sounds great, some elements of the “labor” portion of the camp seem needlessly unpleasant in hindsight. The hardest part of the trip was when we’d run out of lake, we would have to portage 75lb canoes on our shoulders over land. Some of the trails for this were narrow and not well maintained, so occasionally you would run into a tree with the leading edge of your canoe and have the impact reverberate through the metal and onto your shoulders, making your head painfully feel like a struck bell with jarring waves of force from the collision. Sometimes the trails would be covered in deep mud, and in one wrong step, a hiking boot would be completely sucked off your foot. You would be stuck there to figure out how to right the situation with one shoe, balancing on one foot, and the 75lb canoe on your head.
What lesson did any of that teach? What character did that build?
A small number of things happened to me there that I consider wholly unnecessary and even more objectionable. The first is that the water was revolting, it was naturally brown and we had to treat it with iodine. It was obvious from our itchy existence that some of these shallow lakes were mosquito breeding grounds and it was conceptually disgusting. I know many of us forced the water down and especially at first were likely dehydrated.
Another is that the lakes contained leeches. I am not generally squeamish but parasites will do it, and I remember the only emotional moment I had the whole trip was an actual fit of panic and terror when leeches got onto my boots and I literally ran out of my clothing screaming uncontrollably.
What lesson did that teach me? What skills did that build?
As another item, it was childishly transparent to me even in the moment but the whole trip is supposed to culminate in one finally epiphany-inducing event, which is “solo night”. For my group this meant instead of sleeping together in tents, we were sent off each to one of many tiny nearby islands with a plastic tarp and twine to construct a shelter and “reflect”.
This seems criminally stupid, but the tarps had no holes to use to secure the twine, so to put a structure together you had to twist around the ends of the tarp and secure the twine there. The remaining tarp section was so small that this left little shelter, and of course that night it rained cats and dogs.
Maybe the creature found me in an attempt to escape the rain, but I woke up on solo night to outrageously loud thunder and a mouse running over my sleeping body. I screamed and thrashed, causing the panicked mouse to zigzag back and forth over me in confusion instead of cleanly escape. This experience apparently bothered me enough that my parents told me they heard me yelling about it in my sleep once I got back home. I think my mom laughed about it in telling me, which I find chilling now.
The final thing I consider not ok is related to period health so CW on that.
So obviously us group of teenagers there for a month would most all need feminine hygiene products during this stay. The abysmal bathroom situation was something like a seat over giant holes dug into the ground at periodic intervals. We were SUPPOSED to be respectful of nature and since those products wouldn’t decompose, we were instructed to bring used ones back to counselors to be added to a bag we would be CARRYING AROUND this entire trip for disposal once we were back at base camp.
UM, ARE YOU ALL F@#$ING KIDDING ME?
Imagine being an insecure teenage girl and having to bring a used product like that back to an authority figure. Aaaaaabsolutely not. Sorry nature, I just lied and threw things away improperly. And hey, I get it, nature enthusiasts can tell me I suck for that - but I was not there willingly, and even as an adult I feel like being forced to have to do that is a bridge way too far. Even if my memory is wrong and we were supposed to just have carried them around ourselves, I’m willing to say that is way icky and unreasonable and I would not do it then and wouldn’t do it now (there’s a reason I don’t do any type of camping or outdoor activity that comes without real bathroom facilities. Glamping is as far as I’ll go, even now).
(I do have some verification I am not misremembering this, found on this instructional site about a UK Outward Bound variant):
Being on your period whilst on expedition shouldn’t spoil your adventure. You should continue tochange your sanitary products regularly, always remembering to wash your hands before and afterwards. Pack out any used products in nappy sacks or ziplock bags, placing them in sanitary bins when you return to the centre. You can carry the products yourself or put them in the communal
sealable container.
I’m sure plenty of people would have too much of a sense of decorum to include that last section, but I somehow was born without shame and dgaf. The handling of this entire topic is a bridge too far. On the basis of that point alone, kids should not have been FORCED into that situation which made me feel deeply uncomfortable and exposed. I understand it is technically the responsible way to behave in nature, but yeah I honestly do not give a flying f@#$ and did not honor it while doing Outward Bound.
Ending on a lighter note
I did have one experience while there that I will remember in a positive light for its singular hilarity. While doing the 10000 lakes trek, we would regularly encounter other groups of all types. Some of these (teenage boys) were more interesting to us, although to our disappointment none were ever cute. Feeling like delinquents being watched already, none of us ever struck up a conversation with our delinquent-boy-counterparts on their own exhibitions.
Sometimes the people we ran into were more exotic though, such as the time we stumbled upon what appeared to be a group of Mennonites. Me being from Maryland I had seen Pennsylvania Amish on occasion and was less intrigued, but some of the girls from other places were completely fascinated by this new category of adult and their foreign, uber-traditional dress. (I remember long woolen dresses and full length sleeves on the two women, and a neck-high black wool garment on the man).
This is so ridiculous that it sounds, I’m sure, made up but as we watched the Mennonite group, instead of paddling alternating sides, the three in one canoe all rowed simultaneously on the left of the canoe. This resulted in such a lopsided burst forward that the entire procession fell over a small waterfall (nothing that would cause injury maybe 4-5 feet high, and it was clear they were uninjured luckily).
Well, for entertainment-starved teenagers who could even think of anything more wonderfully hilarious or fantastically comical than a boatful of Mennonites falling over a waterfall? We all absolutely lost it and were entirely unsuccessful in stifling our laughter to not be rude. Throughout the entire trip that one moment is the one, I can remember of happiness, pure unadulterated hilarity, and we’d lose it all over again any time it came up for the entire rest of the trip. I will note, that one positive moment had nothing to do with Outward Bound, the curriculum or program or structure. That moment was a rare lightning strike of funny circumstances.
Another closing note is, I was like a mf-ing rock throughout this experience. I didn’t get mad, I didn’t get emotional, but I had a steady surge of disdainful rebuke at my entire predicament and circumstances. I participated fully, I wasn’t slow or sullen, my counselors and peers had no complaints. But they weren’t the source of my anger, so why should I have made them suffer? I was furious at my parents. I found the entire program transparent and laughable. Here now years later, I think fourteen-year-old me was completely correct. They did not get back a different child. I was not “reset”. I suspect no kids are through these gimmicky, unscientific programs. I came back and just refused to speak with them for several months. My father later apologized. I don’t know if I ever said I forgave him. I don’t.
It was foolish, misguided, expensive, and unnecessary. I will call a spade forever about that. I don’t actively have anger anymore, but I don’t have forgiveness either. I don’t care or feel bad about that. It was a bad idea, a bad program, badly executed, badly chosen, the entire thing was a farce. It is a perverse happiness but I am happy that I didn’t let this program shake me or convince me I was broken or have me fall into groupthink that it MUST be meaningful because of how awful and painful it was. Life doesn’t work like that. It is a consolation sometimes to think our pain has meaning, but sometimes it just literally doesn’t and I’m proud of younger me for having surprising insight and skepticism for this entire business.
My final happier note is that it is greatly ironic to me that I’ve recovered enough from this awful experience to have gotten much outdoorsier in my adulthood. Afterward I hated nature so much 14 year old me would never have imagined 32-year-old me trekking around rainforests and hiking near daily for fun. There’s a positive message about human resiliency hidden somewhere in there I’m sure.
Its funny actually even remembering or recounting this, it seems like it happened to some whole other person. If you met me today I’m so normal, my social life and inner life are so calm and uneventful, I’m reasonably successful. You would probably never look at me and think “oh you are someone who seems like they’d be sent to a bootcamp for bad teens!”. More proof these programs can hurt just about anyone.
In closing, and other reading/resources
I am happy to learn revisiting this topic with adult eyes that there IS now so much pushback against TTI. I’ve braced myself to watch Paris Hilton’s much more dire account in the documentary she came out with about her experience in one of the more extreme Utah programs. Last Podcast on the Left just began its new multi-part series on this topic that I’m excited to continue. I also found a subreddit for people who attended these, and have found advocacy and information efforts underway that I’m very glad exist.
If I could leave a message with anyone reading this, on top of what was already said:
Parents: PLEASE do not buy into the crock that is these programs. Their efficacy has never been proven or even studied in a comprehensive, rigorous manner
If I have any goal with this piece it is to demonstrate that it is completely wrong for Outward Bound to escape the TTI designation or benefit from any different reputation than the worse programs out there. Children have died in Outward Bound, I am not kidding. It is not different, it is not better, do not support them
Having a kid you are worried about has to be miserable, but parents: please consider established, methodically evaluated and licensed options for getting kids in trouble help and treatment. The punitive model is not helpful, and some of the stories on the subreddit are absolutely heartbreaking. These programs lack oversight and attract far too many bad apples that could scar a child for life
Thanks for reading!