Mental Health and the Outdoors

How would you describe your experiences with nature as a child? Growing up, maybe you had access to a park or a vegetable garden. Maybe you went bike riding with your friends around your neighborhood or explored the woods with your beloved dog. The benefits of having access to nature extends far beyond childhood and impacts a person’s mental wellness for many years after such experiences according to a recent article from the American Journal of Health Education.

Many of the children we serve at the Princeton-Blairstown Center come from historically marginalized communities and do not have the same access to safe natural environments and often pay for it with their mental health. Another factor that has dramatically impacted children’s mental health is COVID-19. Not only has COVID-19 made it more difficult for children to access nature – spending hours in front of screens inside and isolated – but it has resulted in a children’s mental health crisis. COVID-19 has escalated cases of domestic violence and alcohol consumption in the home which can lead to violence and abuse. It is clear that something must be done to support young people - especially those from historically marginalized communities.

After a systematic review of 35 papers, researchers concluded that access to nature made a difference in children’s and teens’ mental health. Outdoor education programs and access to nature have been proven to provide physical, psychological, and academic benefits to children including helping to regulate the body’s stress response, boosting self-esteem and self-expression, and promoting cooperation and communication with others. The authors continue, “Equitable access and opportunities to learn, succeed, and be active in nature for children of marginalized backgrounds, can result in so much more than improved physical fitness and enhanced cognition. Such engagement with natural environments can create an inclusive sense of belonging in outdoor spaces, which can potentially provide access to coping mechanisms with opportunities to prevent and mitigate wellness disparities that could disproportionately affect the mental health of urban youth.”  

Providing equitable access to transformative outdoor experiences is core to what we do every day at the Princeton-Blairstown Center and it is why we developed our Summer Bridge Program which is designed to serve 550-600 children from historically-marginalized communities – free of charge. Money and location can be huge barriers keeping children from experiencing the outdoors – and its mental health benefits.

For our non-Summer Bridge programming, we work with each group to meet them where they are around program costs because we believe that every child deserves to explore nature and reap the long-lasting mental health benefits that result from such experiences. It’s also the reason we are working to develop our Inside - Out program, designed to provide access and equity to middle school students from Trenton free of charge. The program provides six environmental education lessons during an overnight stay at our Blairstown Campus. Students are immersed in hands-on outdoor education that is aligned with state science curriculum standards. The program also includes two sessions designed to help students build their social-emotional skills, deepening their connections to other students, teachers, and the outdoors.

STEM, SEL, & PBC

Sometimes it seems like there is a “day” for everything. There’s Pi Day, National Panda Day, National Puppy Day, National Potato Chip Day… we could go on. However, there are two events that the Princeton-Blairstown Center is especially interested in celebrating this month!

Four Summer Bridge participants pose for the camera.

 SEL Day, celebrated on March 11, is a way to celebrate the importance of social emotional learning (SEL). Social emotional learning is a mainstay of the Center’s programming and is woven into every single activity and course. We believe it is important to incorporate social emotional learning into our programming because providing SEL programming allows youth to practice and become competent in social-emotional skills such as learning how to identify and process their emotions, become more self-aware, and develop compassion and empathy for others. To showcase and promote our SEL curriculum and celebrate SEL Day, we shared pictures, videos, and articles on all our social media that relate to social emotional learning. We even share ALL our resources, including our SEL curriculum for middle- and high school students — for free. You can find all of our SEL resources here.

March is also NJ Stem Month! This month, all organizations in the state are called upon to showcase and celebrate their work in STEM. The Center has been actively participating in the month-long celebration of all things STEM by posting photos, stories, and videos on social media using the hashtag: #NJSTEMMonth. You can find all of our #NJSTEMMonth posts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter!

Summer Bridge participants work together on an assignment.

All our programming has SEL and STEM elements, but we have one program in particular that really focuses on both SEL and STEM: the award-winning Summer Bridge Program, a one-week leadership and academic enrichment program that focuses on developing social emotional learning skills, lessening summer learning loss, and helping students create strong relationships with their peers and with adults. During the week-long program, students are divided into small groups of 10-12 and paired with a trained facilitator and a school/agency chaperone.  Each group spends time engaged in hands-on Literacy, STEM, and SEL activities. Traditionally, the program is held at our campus in Blairstown, but with a global pandemic we decided to bring the program to the communities where our students live in 2021 and 2022.

Two Summer Bridge participants collaborating.

 The Center’s Summer Bridge Program is designed to serve youth from historically marginalized communities – free of charge. We realize that not everybody has the same access to resources and opportunities. This is our way of helping to provide quality SEL and STEM education to everybody!

Because we do want everybody to have a reason to celebrate SEL day and NJ STEM Month with us this March!

Indigenous Peoples Day 2021

This is the first Indigenous Peoples Day to be earmarked by a U.S. Presidential Proclamation. It begins: “Since time immemorial, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians have built vibrant and diverse cultures — safeguarding land, language, spirit, knowledge, and tradition across the generations.”

The document does not omit the legacy of “violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror wrought upon Native communities and Tribal Nations,” and enumerates several ways in which the actions of the government have harmed indigenous people in the U.S. It also points out the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on Native communities. To this point, an alarming statistic from The Guardian indicated that when “compared to white children, American Indian/Alaska Native children were 4.5 times more likely to lose a parent or grandparent caregiver” to Covid-19. This terrible and permanent legacy of the pandemic is painfully similar to the forced or coerced removals of Native children from their birth families that occurred regularly until the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act. In an organization focused on the growth and support of young people, these parts of American history are especially heartbreaking.

Given this long and painful legacy, of which these two small examples are just the tip of a proverbial iceberg, it may seem antithetical to “celebrate” Indigenous Peoples Day. However, a “[recognition of] Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society,” and the ongoing efforts for the protection of their cultures and communities are certainly cause for celebration.

As part of PBC’S commitment towards creating a more equitable and just community, part of our welcome speech to each group that visits the Blairstown Campus is a Land Acknowledgement, which shares information about the Native people who originally inhabited the region. It reads: “The Princeton-Blairstown Center recognizes that we occupy traditional ancestral lands, obtained by coerced cession, of the Munsee Lenni-Lenape people, a people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their heritage. We honor and acknowledge that the land we occupy stands on part of their ancestral homeland.”

This day is also a call to all people to take steps toward long-delayed progress and justice for Native people and their communities. While there are lots of suggestions about how to observe the day with respect and meaning, consider something as simple as examining common words or phrases that carry harmful or racist connotations and working to eliminate them from your vocabulary.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

The Challenge Our Children Face

At this writing, the first Americans have received a COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial, and it looks as if we might be able to start a move toward some sense of normalcy at Blairstown. For the historically marginalized young people we work with, some sense of normalcy can't come too soon. 

As of December 3rd, more than 1.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, representing 12% of all cases.  Thankfully, COVID-19 associated hospitalizations and death are rare among children, but the long-term impact still needs to be studied.   

While COVID-19 may not be as physically debilitating for children as it is for adults, its impact on their mental health, access to food and housing, and educational opportunity is more than most of us can fully understand, particularly for the young people PBC works with in Newark, Camden, and Trenton. 

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 43% of parents living with children reported that they or a family member had lost a job or taken a pay cut due to the pandemic, including 62% of Hispanic families, 50% of black families, and 36.5% of white families. Fifty-two percent of low-income families reported job losses. 

Lower-income adults and families, like those we serve in Newark and Trenton, were particularly vulnerable to the financial impact of the virus. Only 23% had emergency funds set aside to cover three months of expenses in case of a job loss, illness, or economic downturn. Over 46% of low-income adults say they have had trouble paying their bills since the start of the pandemic and approximately 33% report they are having trouble paying rent or making mortgage payments.  

New Jersey food bank operators report that people in some places are waiting 2½ hours to get a bag of food. Soup kitchens and food pantries are reporting double, even triple, the normal traffic. Lines waiting for grab-and-go food packages form at dawn in some places and stretch for blocks. Food security programs are used to seeing seniors, veterans, the homeless, people with mental or emotional difficulties. During COVID-19 they are also seeing service workers, hospitality workers, teachers, nurses, construction workers, and professionals. 

With most schools remote due to high local infection rates, children who normally have access to free breakfast and lunches at school must get nutrition another way, further exacerbating food insecurity. When a student's basic needs for food, clothing, or shelter are unmet, it's almost impossible to learn. Adequate affordable housing is an ongoing problem in our state, where high housing costs abound, and the pandemic has only made the situation worse; on December 14th, NJ Spotlight News featured "19%" as their number of the day, representing the percentage of NJ adults with children who said they are afraid they won't make their next rent or mortgage payment. 

While most schools in Trenton and Newark found ways to get Chromebooks or computers to their students at the start of the pandemic, many students still don't have access to reliable internet for school work. A McKinsey study states that lower-income students are less likely to have access to high-quality remote learning or to a conducive learning environment, such as a quiet space with minimal distractions, devices they do not need to share, high-speed internet, and parental academic supervision. Many students in Trenton and Newark have parents who are essential employees who are unable to work from home, help their children navigate connectivity issues, or supervise their school work. 

A recent study from the New York University Grossman School of Medicine looked at 10 major US cities and found that in counties where the population was substantially non-white with a median income defined as $60,240, the COVID-19 death rate was more than nine times higher when compared to counties that are substantially white with the same median income. And the infection rate was nearly eight times higher for the more racially and ethnically diverse counties that authors called "more-poverty areas." What does this mean for PBC's students?  Many lost family members to the virus, and even more had family members become severely ill. This can lead to added stress, depression, and a sense of isolation for our students.

All of these factors make it critically important that our students have access to high-quality academic enrichment and a supportive peer group they can connect with to help them process the trauma they have experienced over the past year.  We will continue to provide virtual after school programs for some students and weekly SEL lesson plans for educators and youth workers. Additionally, we are beginning to plan for off-site programming that will take place in parks near where our students live so they can connect and learn together outdoors until COVID is eradicated.  

Thank you for helping us provide these much-needed opportunities to historically marginalized students. They have had a year that most of us cannot fully imagine.