WinGate Wilderness Therapy

The WinGate Difference

Unlike most wilderness-based treatment programs, WinGate does not use level systems, group consequences, or any other behavior-modification techniques. That’s because these techniques do not create lasting change.

Instead, WinGate seeks the kind of internally motivated change that relies upon a profound therapeutic alliance between the client and the therapeutic team. This kind of alliance requires a staff that is creative, caring, authentically engaged, and exhaustively trained. Most importantly, though, it requires a deep and genuine respect for our clients.

How Do We Know Our Approach Works?
Not only is alliance-based therapy validated by extensive clinical research, but it’s also validated by our own experience with hundreds of clients. We watch young people make profound life changes on a daily basis.

Why Doesn't Everyone Do It This Way?
Alliance-based therapy is extremely difficult to do! When faced with highly resistant clients, even experienced clinicians instinctively seek control, compliance, and behavioral change.

That’s why so many programs—whether outpatient, wilderness-based or residential—rely on level systems and other behavioral approaches that are designed to compel, rather than inspire, change

This kind of change does not last because it depends upon environmental factors that disappear once treatment is over. We seek internally motivated change—the kind that lasts a lifetime.

Who We Are
WinGate was founded by a team of experienced wilderness therapists and treatment - industry leaders who were dissatisfied with the wilderness therapy options available to teens and young adults.

We are unified in our conviction that all people must feel respected, valued, safe, and in control of the changes they make for those changes to last. They must transform from the inside out, not the outside in.

This is the power of WinGate.