Per Wijnands

Per Wijnands is a Dutch Adventure Therapist. As a former social worker who works as a sociotherapist, he has been fascinated by Experiential Learning for more than 20 years and has successfully used this method with families, individuals and all kinds of groups facing a large number of mental health problems. He currently works as an Adventure Therapist in Youth Mental Health Care. Per regularly gives courses and workshops focused on Experiential Learning and Adventure Therapy. He is a co-founder of the Adventure Therapy Institute and the European Adventure Therapy network. He is also co-author of the first Dutch book on Adventure Therapy ("Handboek Adventure Therapie met kinderen, jongeren en hun gezinnen”). Besides that he is certificated as an European Treeclimbing Therapist.

For more than 20 years he has been working successfully with families, individuals and various groups struggling with multiple psychiatric and mental health problems on the basis of experiential education. He is the first Dutch person to bear the title "Erlebnispädagoge be®" since 2020 and is certified by the “Bundesverband Individual- und Erlebnispädagogik e.V.”, Germany (Federal Association for Individual and Experiential Education).
Per Wijnands has regularly given courses and workshops on experiential education and adventure therapy for many years.

He is co-founder of the Adventure Therapy Institute GmbH & Co. KG, the European Adventure Therapy Network (ATE) and co-initiator of GATE (Gathering for Adventure Therapy in Europe). In the Netherlands and Germany, he is involved in various experiential education and adventure therapy working groups and networks. Together with Monique Scheres he is the author of the book "Handboek Adventure Therapie met kinderen, jongeren en hun gezinnen" -"handbook of adventure therapy with children, adolescents and their families".