Our Mission

Odyssey Wilderness Programs offers students and families the opportunity to find strength and experience success.

Our mission defines Odyssey Wilderness Programs. We know that the wilderness in wilderness therapy plays an important role in the level of programming we provide—that is why our wilderness is the beach and the ocean. Our positive experience model is at the heart of our wilderness therapy programs, and shows in the smiles, happiness and feelings of success that our students experience as they interact with these pristine natural environments.

We are a community of individuals within our organization, and we know the importance of modeling the kind of behavior we want to see in our wilderness therapy clients. By utilizing experiential education to demonstrate commitment, leadership and teamwork amongst our staff, our goal is to establish communities of young people who take responsibility for their choices and behaviors and play an active role in building relationships within their families.

At the heart of Odyssey’s experiential education curriculum is the concept of choice and responsibility. Through environmentally sound practices such as Leave No Trace ethics, students learn to not only recognize the impact their choices have on themselves, but also to take responsibility for the impact their behavior has on the surrounding natural environment and community.

Odyssey deeply respects and appreciates the natural world and practices ethics that help to sustain the environments of which we are a part. We have found that the Pacific Northwest offers the perfect setting for the adventure of experiential education along with the emotional growth involved in wilderness therapy programs.

Our Philosophy of Wilderness Therapy

At the core of our wilderness therapy programs is the Odyssey clinical model, which combines cognitive behavioral therapy, family systems therapy and experiential education. On the individual level, how we think, how we feel and how we act all work together to form a dynamic system of behavior. Over the course of a wilderness therapy program, shifting one belief or one thought can change the entire system and ultimately create new choices and behaviors in our students.

On the family level, we take a systems approach to working with our wilderness therapy clients. Depending on circumstances, a therapist may point out to the family a set of interaction patterns they might not have noticed or suggest different ways of responding to other family members or situations. These changes in the way of responding can then trigger positive repercussions in the whole system, leading to a more stable and productive systemic family state.