Why some doctors are writing prescriptions for time outdoors…

The first time J. Phoenix Smith told me that soil has healing properties that can help thwart depression, I just nodded slowly.

Smith is an ecotherapist, a practitioner of nature-based exercises intended to address both mental and physical health. Which means she recommends certain therapies that trigger in me, as a medical doctor, more skepticism than serenity: Listen to birdsong, in your headphones if necessary. Start a garden, and think of the seeds’ growth as a metaphor for life transitions. Find a spot in a park and sit there for 20 minutes every week, without checking your phone, noting week-to-week and seasonal changes in a journal.

Ecotherapy is a fledgling profession, still unrestrained by such things as “standards of practice” and “licensing requirements.” It can mean regular outdoor sessions with a therapist or simple exercises undertaken on one’s own, and can be part of a general approach to well-being or a supplement to treatment for a medical condition. (It is not intended as a replacement for standard evidence-based treatments.)

When we get closer to nature—be it untouched wilderness or a backyard tree—we do our overstressed brains a favor…

A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health, according to an interesting new study of the physical effects on the brain of visiting nature.

Most of us today live in cities and spend far less time outside in green, natural spaces than people did several generations ago.

City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show….

Here is more supporting evidence that being outside has positive psychological and physiological benefits from Outside Magazine.

“Studies have shown that being outside has positive psychological and physiological benefits. Can the nature cure compete with Xanax?”

This selection of books explains how nature helps heal.

A Stanford-led study finds quantifiable evidence that walking in nature could lead to a lower risk of depression

Feeling down? Take a hike.

A new study finds quantifiable evidence that walking in nature could lead to a lower risk of depression.

Specifically, the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found that people who walked for 90 minutes in a natural area, as opposed to participants who walked in a high-traffic urban setting, showed decreased activity in a region of the brain associated with a key factor in depression…