Outdoor and Adventure Therapy in Atlanta for Teens and Young Adults
The Launch Pad ATL makes outdoor, adventure-based therapy a reality for adolescents, teens and young adult men in Atlanta. Our office at 1411 Dutch Valley Place NE sits within walking distance of both Piedmont Park and the Atlanta Beltline, so your session can happen on a trail, on a bench or on a bike.
For a teenager who has already decided that therapy means being looked at and asked how he feels, that difference is often the entire difference between a client who shows up and one who does not.
What outdoor therapy for teens in Atlanta actually looks like
The honest answer to the question most parents are really asking — what will my kid actually be doing for that hour?
Your teenager meets his therapist at our Dutch Valley Place office. The first few minutes happen indoors: a check-in, and a decision about where the session is going. Then the two of them walk out — into Piedmont Park, or onto the Beltline, depending on the day and the work.
The session is the standard 50 minutes. Perhaps 40 of those are spent moving. The conversation happens shoulder to shoulder rather than face to face, and that is not incidental: there is no eye contact to manage, and a silence outdoors reads as a pause rather than as a test being failed. Adolescents who give an office three-word answers routinely talk for twenty minutes on a footpath.
Nothing is cancelled for weather. Sessions run in cold and in light rain — coats on, hour unchanged. In a thunderstorm or genuine Atlanta August heat, the session moves indoors to the office: same hour, same therapist, same fee.
There is no kit and no fitness requirement. School clothes and closed-toe shoes are the entire list. This is a therapy session that happens to be outside, not a workout, a boot camp or an endurance test.
Confidentiality gets planned rather than hoped for. Routes and times avoid the busiest stretches of the park, and in the first session your teenager decides in advance what he wants said if the two of them pass someone he knows. Teenagers ask about this more than parents expect, and having an agreed answer is usually what lets them relax into the hour.
Adventure therapy in Atlanta for adolescent and teen boys
Adventure therapy is the same clinical work with one ingredient added: a task that is genuinely difficult, attempted alongside other people, with an outcome nobody can fake. Our adolescent groups have used mountain biking, longboarding, slacklining and disc golf for exactly that reason.
A boy who says he does not care about anything cares very visibly the third time he falls off a slackline in front of his peers. Frustration tolerance cannot be role-played in an office; it has to be provoked and then processed while it is still live, in the ten minutes after it happens. That window is the whole method.
Groups focus on developing peer relationships and problem-solving skills, and on building mindfulness and resilience in the face of challenge. They run seasonally and require a screening appointment first — see the current Fall Adventure Group for dates and fees. Adventure-based work is also available inside individual sessions for teenagers who are not ready for a group, or who cannot make the group night.
Walk and talk therapy for teenagers and young adults in Atlanta
Walk and talk therapy is the plainest version of the idea: a standard therapy hour conducted while walking. No task, no group, no equipment — just the route and the conversation.
It suits two people in particular. The 15-year-old who shuts down under sustained eye contact and needs somewhere to put his attention while he says something hard. And the 22-year-old who finished college, moved back into a childhood bedroom, and cannot sit still in a chair for fifty minutes because sitting still is precisely the thing that has started to feel like failure.
To be unambiguous about what this is: it is licensed psychotherapy, with the same clinical record, the same confidentiality and the same therapist as an office session. It is not physical therapy, personal training or a wellness walk. The walking is a setting, not the treatment.
Nature-based therapy and ecotherapy for adolescents in Atlanta
Nature therapy, nature-based therapy and ecotherapy are three names for the same clinical idea: the natural setting is not a backdrop to the treatment, it is part of it. For adolescents and young adults specifically, that matters in a way it may not for other clients.
A teenager who has spent the week regulating himself through a screen is being asked to do something genuinely unfamiliar when he spends fifty minutes outdoors without one. For many of our clients, tolerating that — being unstimulated, outside, in company — is not a pleasant side effect of the session. It is the treatment goal, practiced weekly.
We do this in Atlanta's own green space: Piedmont Park and the tree-lined stretches of the Beltline, ten minutes from where your teenager goes to school. Nature-based therapy for teens does not require a mountain range.
This is not a wilderness camp. Your child sleeps at home.
Searching for outdoor therapy for a struggling teenager surfaces a great many residential wilderness programs — usually in another state, usually eight to twelve weeks long, usually costing tens of thousands of dollars, and sometimes involving a transport service that collects a child from his bedroom before dawn.
That is not what we do, and we want parents to establish that in the first thirty seconds rather than the first phone call.
The Launch Pad ATL is local. One 50-minute session a week, in Atlanta, at a time that fits around school. Your child attends class that day and sleeps in his own bed that night. There is no enrolment, no program length and no transport. You can stop at any point, for any reason.
The other side of that honesty: weekly sessions are not the right level of care for every young person. If your child is experiencing active suicidal thoughts, ideation or self-harming behaviors, we will tell you plainly that he needs more than we offer, and help you find it. In an immediate crisis, contact the Georgia Crisis and Access Line at 1-800-715-4225, or call or text 988.
Who outdoor and adventure therapy is for
We work with adolescents and teens aged 12 to 18, and with young adult men aged 18 to 26. Outdoor and adventure-based sessions are most often used with young people who are dealing with:
Difficulty transitioning to independence — moving out, starting college, holding a job
Low motivation and lack of direction, or feeling stuck and unsure how to take a first step
Executive functioning struggles with organization, planning, time management and follow-through
Avoidance of challenge or social contact, and withdrawal driven by anxiety or low confidence
Emotional regulation, frustration tolerance and the ability to absorb a setback
It is also, frequently, for the teenager who has already been to therapy once, hated it, and told you he is not going back. Changing the room is sometimes the only argument that works.
Related: Adolescent Boys Therapy, Young Adult Men's Therapy and Executive Functioning Coaching.
Fees and insurance
The fee schedule does not change with the setting. An outdoor session is a standard individual session, billed at the standard rate — there is no surcharge for meeting in the park.
Initial phone consultation — free, 15 minutes
New client intake session — $280, 60 minutes
Standard individual session — $200, 50 minutes
Family session — $350, 90 minutes
Phone or video session — $175, 30 minutes
Reduced-fee options are available; ask on the consultation call.
We do not accept any form of insurance. We do provide a Super Bill statement, which you can submit to your insurer for possible out-of-network reimbursement. If you intend to submit, tell us at the outset so the documentation is right from the first session. Full details are on the scheduling page.
Who you would be working with
Sessions are with Matt Reynolds, LMFT — a licensed marriage and family therapist in Atlanta, a Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and Chair of the Metro Atlanta chapter of the Georgia Association of Marriage & Family Therapists. He worked with adolescents as a teacher, coach and mentor before he was a clinician, and trained at the Care & Counseling Center of Georgia and the Ridgeview Institute. More on Matt's background.
Common questions from parents
Does my teenager have to be athletic?
No. Walk and talk sessions are a walk on flat ground at conversational pace. The adventure groups do ask for basic biking skills for the biking weeks, and that is stated on the group page, but individual outdoor sessions require no fitness or skill of any kind.
What happens if it rains?
The session still happens. Light rain and cold are worked through outdoors; storms and extreme heat move the hour into the office. Sessions are not cancelled or rescheduled because of weather.
Where exactly do sessions take place?
They start at our office at 1411 Dutch Valley Place NE, Atlanta, GA 30324, and move into Piedmont Park or onto the Atlanta Beltline, both of which are walkable from the door.
Is a session outdoors really therapy?
Yes. It is conducted by the same licensed clinician, for the same fifty minutes, under the same confidentiality and clinical record as a session held in the office. Only the room changes.
Can we start indoors and move outside later?
Often that is the better order. Plenty of clients begin in the office, and the outdoor sessions start once the teenager knows his therapist well enough to want them.
Is this a wilderness or residential program?
No. It is weekly therapy in Atlanta. Your child lives at home and attends school as normal.
Booking a first outdoor session
Call Keri London at (404) 939-7712 and ask for the free 15-minute consultation. Tell her you are asking about outdoor sessions and roughly how old your teenager is; she will match him to the right clinician and find a time.
If you would rather write than call, send the details through the contact form and we will come back to you.