Seventy Days in the Desert, or Only Connect

So the Boy made it to wilderness therapy Monday where he will spend eight to twelve weeks living with ten other boys his age in the high plains of the Southwest. The morning before he left, he said "I am going into this blind. I have no idea what to expect."

"I can see that," I said.

After we dropped him off, Jack and I met with our parent liaison to ask her questions. The goal is to get the kids back to taking care of their basic physical needs, and then work on addressing their emotional needs. We talked about a lot of stuff, but there were two major take-aways:

• There are no toilets. They will use WAG (Waste Alleviation and Gelling) bags or dig latrines. 
• They don't get a spoon. They have to carve a spoon out of wood. 

When I told the people I work with about the spoon, two of the guys said "Spoon? He can eat with his hands!"

"What about cooking?" asked one of the women.

"How will they stir what they need to cook?" I asked.

"A stick!" the guys replied.

So maybe it won't be so bad on the physical side. The emotional side will be another kick. The program gives the parents a lot of reading and writing. In the seventy-five page packet written in single spaced 6.5 font, they talk about disconnection:

"Attempts to control prevent parents and children from finding satisfaction in their relationship and lead to disconnection. Being disconnected is the source of almost all human problems such as what is called mental illness, drug addiction, violence, crime, school failure, spousal abuse, to mention a few."

That second sentence caught my eye. I immediately thought of the E.M. Forster quote in Howards End:* "Only connect."

Clearly, it seems that being disconnected, alone or isolated could cause a truckload of problems as mentioned above. Solitary confinement is considered to be inhumane punishment. People who are isolated from other reasons have challenges, too. The military often tries to support the spouses of people who are deployed overseas.

I suppose we might need to look at the cause of the disconnection--why is it there, and can it be fixed? If so, how can it be fixed? Is the disconnection caused by a communication issue, or something more structural?

And then I wondered if the quote in the parent book was always true or not. Yet, when I read accounts written by people with depression (See Depression Comix), it seems like there are people in the depressed person's life who want to help them connect, but the illness gets in the way. Is the illness causing the disconnection, or is the disconnection causing the illness?

Whether the statement above is fully true or not, a solid starting point would be to bring the depressed person out of their isolation, and help them feel less alone.

* TBH -- I never read the whole book.