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.

The Value of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Difficult Times

Senior Program Manager, Ron Franco, leads SEL and STEM activities during Wilderness Leadership School.

As a former high school science teacher, I can tell you that there is always a lot to think about when it comes to planning lessons and managing a classroom. At the forefront of most “teacher-brains” is content: How should I teach this concept? When will I get to that before our standardized tests? Unfortunately, one of the things furthest from my mind was incorporating a comprehensive social emotional learning curriculum when I was trying to find the time, energy, and funds to include more projects; make sure my students did better on standardized tests; and scaffold lessons to suit individual talents and needs.  

COVID-19 has shown us that learning isn’t just about content. It is about feeling connected, being able to communicate, and having a safe space to feel a sense of purpose and belonging.

This post written by Emma García and Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute showcases why school policies and curricula need to change from focusing solely on content to putting social-emotional learning front and center. Staggering statistics including the fact that mental-health emergency room visits by middle- and high-school aged students have increased by 31% highlight how children need support to deal with their trauma, emotions, and grief.

When schools abruptly closed their doors for two weeks of “remote learning,” students and teachers thought they were in for a mini-vacation. But two weeks turned to four weeks and four weeks turned to four months and here we are, almost two years later still dealing with the turbulence of the pandemic. I tried to help my students cope by giving them hands-on assignments and sending personal emails and messages when they seemed to be falling behind or despondent. One student was a freshman in an honors biology class who was smart, cared about his academics, and provided insight into our daily conversations, until he lost his mom to COVID-19. When I sent an email after I learned of his mom’s passing, he replied that I was the only teacher to do so and that it really meant a lot to him. From then on, I made sure to email him occasionally to check in and give him the opportunity to talk even though I was not a counselor or social worker. I allowed him time and space to grieve and encouraged him to participate in class at a level that was comfortable for him.

The benefits of social emotional learning are undeniable. This brief written by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in collaboration with The National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention found that SEL programs can have big benefits. After analyzing over 200 studies of different school based SEL programs, they found that participants showed a 9% decrease in conduct problems, such as classroom misbehavior and aggression; a 10% decrease in emotional distress, such as anxiety and depression; a 9% improvement in attitudes about self, others, and school; a 23% improvement in social-emotional skills; a 9% improvement in school and classroom behavior; and an 11% improvement in achievement test scores.  

The Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) believes so strongly that social emotional learning should be a priority that it is the basis for our mission. As we all continue to deal with the fallout of the pandemic, SEL programs are not only beneficial, but essential to students’ emotional and academic success. PBC is providing weekly SEL resources for teachers and educators to use in their classrooms or during virtual meetings to help students manage the additional ups and downs they have had to navigate since March 2020. These weekly emails are one way that PBC can provide teachers and others who work with young people with the tools to keep students connected to their peers and caring adults.

Part of a SEL activity provided by PBC to teachers via email during the pandemic

SEL and Mental Health

May is Mental Health month. In a year where mental health stressors have arrived at the forefront for both students and adults, the role SEL can play in mental health outcomes is worth examining.

Even in “regular” (i.e. pre-pandemic) times, SEL and mental health were considered intertwined. In a brief prepared by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in collaboration with The National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, Connecting Social and Emotional Learning with Mental Health, the organization asserts that “Addressing children’s mental health is critical for school and life success. Social and emotional learning programming, when implemented with fidelity and integrated into the fabric of the school and community, provides students with the skills they need to be successful within an environment that promotes their physical and emotional safety and well-being.” However, in the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic, social emotional learning tops of the list of recommendations for classroom educators for what they can do to best support students’ mental health during COVID.

But, why should that be the focus? While the answer is not truly linear, the CASEL brief outlines the cumulative positive effects of robust SEL programs. By increasing the number of tools a student has to both identify and navigate periods of stress and challenge, their ability to be flexible and resilient increases, and ultimately, mental health interventions become less frequent. According to CASEL, “SEL programming may reduce the number of students who require early intervention, because participation in SEL programs fosters in children the skills they will need to cope with life’s challenges and helps teachers manage their classrooms in ways that promote interest and engagement, all within a caring school environment.”

Participants work together to accomplish goals, enhance communication skills, and strengthen relationships with peers and adults through experiential learning led by PBC facilitators.

At PBC, our experienced facilitators work with students to hone social emotional skills through experiential and adventure education. This approach to teaching SEL - markedly different in practice from most classroom- and school-based SEL initiatives - was recently studied in a group of students in the UK who were all classified as having social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties – arguably among those most in need of mental health supports. The researcher concluded that outdoor and adventure education may offer additional benefits above and beyond those of the classroom efforts, because “as students engaged in outdoor learning activities, they used core SEL skills in combination rather than in isolation. This may differ in – and be an advantage over — how students use SEL skills in classroom-based programs. Another distinct advantage of outdoor SEL intervention programs is the reliance on group work, which provides students with opportunities for developing effective social interactions, communication and relationships.”

Supporting mental health can’t just be focused on screen-free time, or mindfulness, or connecting struggling students with school counselors and therapists. The evidence suggests that incorporating SEL is key to improved mental health outcomes for youth, especially with COVID not yet behind us.