Date of Conferral

2020

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Human Services

Advisor

Eric J. Youn

Abstract

Current research involving wilderness therapy (WT) programs indicates that therapeutic wilderness or outdoor interventions have increased in popularity as alternative approaches for treating at-risk or adjudicated adolescents. However, the role that empathetic perception plays in advancing the efficacy of WT intervention absent from the majority of extant literature. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to address a gap in research involving how empathetic perception may be affected by WT program participation. The conceptual framework for the project involved ecopsychology, a branch of science that addresses the connection between human beings and the natural world. Nine young adults between the ages of 18 and 20 years were surveyed to determine if they perceived a change in empathetic perception as a result of their WT experiences as adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 years. The study focused on 3 areas of empathetic perception involvement: camp peers, program staff, and the natural environment in which the programs operated. Study results were hand-coded from subjects’ verbatim transcripts, progressing from broader responses to five discrete themes: vocabulary, experiences, self-empathy, personal insight, and camp culture. Data were analyzed based upon the alignment of the subjects’ responses to the five identified themes. The resultant data indicated that there was a positive change in empathetic perception towards subjects’ WT peer groups, WT program staff, and the natural world. A primary goal of this study was to address the social change implications of how the identification of empathetic perception in at-risk or struggling adolescents, through WT intervention, may positively impact positive mental health stability within this population.

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