Stress is extremely prevalent within our modern-day society. The need to earn an education, maintain a steady income, support family members, and spend time with friends can cause intense pressure. Recently, research teams have been looking for new and effective ways to decrease stress levels. Our project focused on the effects of nature therapy on stress. Nature therapy involves an individual connecting mindfully with nature, a process which has been demonstrated to improve one's physical and mental health. Because stress is not an easy subject to measure, our study involved objective measures (ex: heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability, sleep score, stress score, and salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase levels) and subjective measures (ex: surveys). For the first half of the four-week study, individuals continued their daily routines for baseline stress measurements. During the second half, participants completed nature therapy activities to determine if the nature therapy reduced the stress measurements. The goals of our study included assessing the impact of nature therapy on the objective and subjective measurements of stress in this small pilot study (N=10) and determining which stress measurements are best for larger, future nature therapy studies. This study, involving human subjects, was approved by Westminster's Institutional Review Board, and confidentiality was maintained on all participant data. The results of our data show a statistically significance decrease in perceived stress following the two weeks of a nature therapy intervention. There were also several individuals who were found to have significant findings for certain stress-related metrics. These results bring up the question of whether specific people are more susceptible to the benefits of nature therapy. Correlation analysis indicates a number of our stress metrics are positively correlated. This small, pilot study indicates that nature therapy does reduce perceived stress. It also provides the groundwork for larger stress-related studies.
The Effects of Nature Therapy on Stress
Category
Student Abstract Submission