Read Online Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Richard Louv
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gained currency in 1992, through the writing of historian and social critic Theodore Roszak. In his book
Voice of the Earth
, Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our “ecological unconscious” that provides “our connection to our evolution on earth.” In recent years, the meaning of the term “ecopsychology” has evolved to include nature therapy, which asks not only what we do to the earth, but what the earth does for us—for our health. Roszak considers that a logical extension of his original thesis.
As he points out, the American Psychiatric Association lists more than three hundred mental diseases in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a large number of them associated with sexual dysfunction. “Psychotherapists have exhaustively analyzed every form of dysfunctional family and social relations, but ‘dysfunctional environmental relations’ does not exist even as a concept,” he says. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual “defines ‘separation anxiety disorder’ as ‘excessive anxiety concerning separation from home and from those to whom the individual is attached.’ But no separation is more pervasive in this Age of Anxiety than our disconnection from the natural world.” It’s time, he says, “for an environmentally based definition of mental health.”
Ecopsychology and all of its budding branches, reinforcing Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, have fueled a new surge of research into the impact of nature on human physical and emotional health. Professor Chawla, the international expert on urban children and nature, is skeptical about some of the claims made in the name of biophilia, but she also argues that one does not have to adopt unreservedly the entire thesis to believe that Edward O. Wilson and the ecopsychology movement are on to something. She calls for a common-sense approach, one that recognizes “the positive effects of involvement with nature on health, concentration, creative play, and a developing bond with the natural world that can form a foundation for environmental stewardship.”
The idea that natural landscapes, or at least gardens, can be therapeuticand restorative is, in fact, an ancient one that has filtered down through the ages. Over two thousand years ago, Chinese Taoists created gardens and greenhouses they believed to be beneficial for health. By 1699, the book
English Gardener
advised the reader to spend “spare time in the garden, either digging, setting out, or weeding; there is no better way to preserve your health.”
In America, mental-health pioneer Dr. Benjamin Rush (a signer of the American Declaration of Independence) declared, “digging in the soil has a curative effect on the mentally ill.” Beginning in the 1870s, the Quakers’ Friends Hospital in Pennsylvania used acres of natural landscape and a greenhouse as part of its treatment of mental illness. During World War II, psychiatry pioneer Carl Menninger led a horticulture therapy movement in the Veterans Administration Hospital System. In the 1950s, a wider movement emerged, one that recognized the therapeutic benefits of gardening for people with chronic illnesses. In 1955, Michigan State University awarded the first graduate degree in horticultural/occupational therapy. And in 1971, Kansas State University established the first horticultural therapy degree curriculum.
Today, pet therapy has joined horticultural therapy as an accepted health-care approach, particularly for the elderly and children. For example, research has shown that subjects experienced significant decreases in blood pressure simply by watching fish in an aquarium. Other reports link pet ownership to a lowering of high blood pressure and improved survival after heart attacks. The mortality rate of heart-disease patients with pets was found to be one-third that of patients without pets. Aaron Katcher, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the University of
Voice of the Earth
, Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our “ecological unconscious” that provides “our connection to our evolution on earth.” In recent years, the meaning of the term “ecopsychology” has evolved to include nature therapy, which asks not only what we do to the earth, but what the earth does for us—for our health. Roszak considers that a logical extension of his original thesis.
As he points out, the American Psychiatric Association lists more than three hundred mental diseases in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a large number of them associated with sexual dysfunction. “Psychotherapists have exhaustively analyzed every form of dysfunctional family and social relations, but ‘dysfunctional environmental relations’ does not exist even as a concept,” he says. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual “defines ‘separation anxiety disorder’ as ‘excessive anxiety concerning separation from home and from those to whom the individual is attached.’ But no separation is more pervasive in this Age of Anxiety than our disconnection from the natural world.” It’s time, he says, “for an environmentally based definition of mental health.”
Ecopsychology and all of its budding branches, reinforcing Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, have fueled a new surge of research into the impact of nature on human physical and emotional health. Professor Chawla, the international expert on urban children and nature, is skeptical about some of the claims made in the name of biophilia, but she also argues that one does not have to adopt unreservedly the entire thesis to believe that Edward O. Wilson and the ecopsychology movement are on to something. She calls for a common-sense approach, one that recognizes “the positive effects of involvement with nature on health, concentration, creative play, and a developing bond with the natural world that can form a foundation for environmental stewardship.”
The idea that natural landscapes, or at least gardens, can be therapeuticand restorative is, in fact, an ancient one that has filtered down through the ages. Over two thousand years ago, Chinese Taoists created gardens and greenhouses they believed to be beneficial for health. By 1699, the book
English Gardener
advised the reader to spend “spare time in the garden, either digging, setting out, or weeding; there is no better way to preserve your health.”
In America, mental-health pioneer Dr. Benjamin Rush (a signer of the American Declaration of Independence) declared, “digging in the soil has a curative effect on the mentally ill.” Beginning in the 1870s, the Quakers’ Friends Hospital in Pennsylvania used acres of natural landscape and a greenhouse as part of its treatment of mental illness. During World War II, psychiatry pioneer Carl Menninger led a horticulture therapy movement in the Veterans Administration Hospital System. In the 1950s, a wider movement emerged, one that recognized the therapeutic benefits of gardening for people with chronic illnesses. In 1955, Michigan State University awarded the first graduate degree in horticultural/occupational therapy. And in 1971, Kansas State University established the first horticultural therapy degree curriculum.
Today, pet therapy has joined horticultural therapy as an accepted health-care approach, particularly for the elderly and children. For example, research has shown that subjects experienced significant decreases in blood pressure simply by watching fish in an aquarium. Other reports link pet ownership to a lowering of high blood pressure and improved survival after heart attacks. The mortality rate of heart-disease patients with pets was found to be one-third that of patients without pets. Aaron Katcher, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the University of
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