Ecotherapy: An alternative approach to groupwork

Despite records of nature-based therapy dating back hundreds of years, the therapeutic term Ecotherapy was formalised by Howard Clinebell in 1996, before publishing his work Ecotherapy – Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth (Clinebell 2016). Clinebell reports of therapeutic theories and conclusions whereby individuals carrying emotional disturbances and psychological disorders can heal through a mutually beneficial relationship between nature and self-nurturing, understanding, and reflecting on their individual condition in contextual comparison the outside world, that of nature, our natural environment, or Mother Nature. 

Clinebell states Ecotherapy is, “Being nurtured by nature, flinging wide our inner windows of grateful awareness of these gifts of life and deepening our intimate interaction with the natural world in ways that are both healing and enlivening” (Clinebell, 1996). Ecotherapy is a widely used term used globally in a variety of different approaches, including horticulture and garden therapy, talking whilst walking within nature, wilderness therapy, nature-based play therapy, equine and animal-assisted therapy, extending to bringing nature indoors through plants, visual artform (painting and sculpture) and static representations of nature through photography and murals (Swank & Shin, 2015).

Ecotherapy as a counselling approach best aligns across a hybrid therapeutic approach including, Humanistic therapy, and when used in conjunction with the principles of Psychodynamic: what has happened to shape who I am today and Person Centred: based on unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, and congruence, while CBT is also important to correct negative schemas at a core level.

Thus, the hybrid approach of the therapies makes for a contemporary and sustainable psychological shift and are likely to prove positive across behavioural disorder treatments. Contemporary literature points to a link between the increase in mental health decline and the decreased time people spend outside in nature.

In 2012 Richard Louv, journalist termed this loss of connection with our natural as “nature deficit-disorder”, although not deemed as a medical diagnosis, Louv points out modern humans’ innate loss of sensual experience, attention deficits and increased levels of emotional and physical illness, owing to a loss a nature-based connection. (Louv, 2012).