Emmy Bassarab - ecotherapy

 Nature-Based Recreational Therapy for Military Service Members: A Strengths approach

    I’d like to talk about one of the research papers I found for the assigned annotated bibliography. I thought it was pretty cool that ecotherapy has actually been shown to help with processing traumatic experiences in veterans. This research paper was a review of a few studied done on this topic. They found that throughout these studies, veterans were able to make positive associations while in nature and also working through traumatic memories. I think this goes back to the original place in the world for humans, which is in nature. I believe we talked in class about how urban spaces are detrimental to human development, because humans had evolved to be in nature. We have certain adaptations that would benefit us in the wild. One example is our increased stamina to be able to follow prey for long distances. In today’s world, certain adaptations are obsolete, so being in these urban spaces can cause increased mental illnesses (i.e. anxiety, depression, etc.) because we are not utilizing those adaptations. I imagine that dealing with PTSD while also in an urban setting is very difficult. I think it’s really cool to know that simply being in nature can truly help veterans get the help that they need. 


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