Wilderness Therapy: How safe is it?
Much Safer than Football
Parents considering enrolling their child into a wilderness therapy program often times are concerned that wilderness living puts their child at more risk than they would be in if they were in a more urban setting. The Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Industry Council initiated a comparison research project to determine if this assumption was correct, it was not. Here are some of the statistics from that research.
Outdoor behavioral healthcare programs (wilderness therapy) average injury rates are 1.12 per 1,000 participant days compared with:
- Backpacking – average injury rate: 2.05
- Downhill Skiing – average injury rate: 3.28
- Football Practice – average injury rate: 19.74
Our focus on best practices has resulted in a 25 percent decrease in the number of incidents of injury and illnesses at our member programs despite a nearly three-fold increase in client days. We continue to track this information and our data compilation and analysis is now being done by Dr. Keith Russell at Western Washington University.
Read article in it’s entirety here http://www.obhic.com/research/risk-in-the-wilderness.html
