I have spoken a lot about services on the farm recently including blogs on why I started offering these services and what I often work on with clients within the farm context. Let’s answer the question I got recently about the evidence around the outdoors and healing trauma.
First, something to consider
There are many outdoor therapy programs across the United States and world: some, like the services I provide, are simply sessions conducted in an outdoor environment.
Others are residential, in-patient services with a range of different styles to treatment, levels of support, and degrees of separation from day-to-day life. Full disclosure: I do not provide in-patient services and I have spoken about the possible negative effects of compulsory in-patient services as seen in this article.
As you view pieces of evidence, make sure that they apply to the type of services you are considering.
Second, here are a few helpful articles
To begin, I have talked about developing grit before as seen here. This is also referred to as resilience and the development of resilience is a part of trauma treatment. Outdoor settings and adventure can increase resilience as found in this study.
There are studies and research on how to best serve and support abused women in a wilderness therapy setting as well as countless studies on using the outdoors in PTSD therapy for veterans.
(Psst…if you don’t want to scour research and prefer a more narrative article on the studies, check out this one.)
Third, here is what I have experienced
I helped organize and run outdoor experiences for the Wounded Warriors Project on ranches in Texas and received amazing feedback on the positive effects.
I have supported social workers, occupational therapists, and other therapists in equine assisted therapy across Colorado and North Carolina. The changes we saw in some participants was mind blowing.
I have run (and am currently running) groups for kids with varying needs and backgrounds and have been humbled by the learning and therapeutic opportunities that the outdoors has provided.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT is an integral part of my work with traumatized youth (here and here are articles on ACT and trauma) and I have found that bringing the exercises and principles of ACT into the outdoors can open doors that would never be available to us in the office setting.
While the outdoors isn’t a magical-fix-it-all-right-now solution to the effects of trauma, it can be a fantastic addition to treatment and is worth considering.
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