The Effects of Forest Therapy Program on Stress Recovery, Connectedness with Nature and Creativity: A Case Study of Da-An Forest Therapy Workshop
| Autor: | Hsuan Hsieh, 謝萱 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 106 The hectic urban lifestyle has kept us from contacting with nature. Owing to the rise of physiological and mental health issues, people started to value the benefits of stress relieving effects form leisure activities. Forest environment not only serves as popular destinations for recreation, but recent studies have shown that reconnecting with forests prevent us from physiological and mental stress. The practice of utilizing forest to promote human health and well-being is called “forest therapy”. However, most recent studies focus on the restorative effects of forest therapy, other aspects of human well-being such as creativity has not yet been well discussed. Therefore, this research chose “2018 Da-An Forest Therapy Workshop” as a case study. To explore the effects of the forest program on “stress recovery”, “connectedness with nature” and “creativity” from the aspects of physiological, mental and higher cognitive state respectively. Hoping to explore the benefits of forest therapy from another perspective. The research design adopted one-group pretest and posttest. The measurements included physiological responses (heart rate, blood pressure, salivary alpha-amylase), psychological indices (Profile of Mood States), connectedness with natural state (Inclusion of Nature in the Self and Chinese State-Connectedness with Nature Scale), and creativity measurement (Chinese Word Remote Associatives Test). Also, the background information and personality traits using IPIP-15 scale were measured to investigate the influence of individual differences. The study recruited 23 subjects (52 ± 12.54 years) from the participants of the program. To analyze the results, the descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, Mann-Whitney U Test and Spearman''s rank correlation coefficient were used. The results showed that the change of all the physiological indices were not significant. However, the results of the blood pressure complied with the law of the initial value, and the diastolic blood pressure had an adjustment effect. The negative mood states including tension, anger, fatigue, depression, confusion, and anxiety were significantly decreased; on the other hand, the the positive mood of vigor was increased significantly. The Inclusion of Nature in the Self scale increased significantly, whereas changes in the Chinese version of state-Connectedness with Nature Scale was not. In sum, the muti-days forest therapy program not only benefits our physiological and mental health, but also increase connectedness with nature and facilitate remote association creativity. The results provide a reference for future researchers and designers of the forest therapy program. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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