Toward an anti-oppressive, trauma-informed, practice in outdoor therapies

Children and youth are exposed to health risks stemming from urbanization, technification, family stressors, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. Outdoor therapeutic approaches offer social workers a range of protective interventions that are strengths-based, build coping skills, can be context specific and are shown to be effective in building resilience and wellbeing in their users (Combs et al., 2016; Harper et al., 2018; Bettman, 2018; Harper & Dobud, 2021). Despite the demonstrated effectiveness of outdoor interventions, little is known about the mechanisms of therapeutic change, and several theoretical perspectives have been offered to explain the therapeutic process. This paper reviews theoretical frameworks and practice models from recent literature, identifying an alternative, holistic approach to outdoor therapy. Outdoor therapy models are considered that exhibit core elements of outdoor therapies, identifying an approach that is locationally flexible and transferrable in settings ranging from urban to wilderness. Little research has been published reflecting preventative, trauma informed approaches to outdoor therapies (Johnson et al., 2020; Harper & Dobud, 2021), and anti-oppressive approaches to outdoor therapies are similarly unexplored. Opportunities for preventative, trauma-informed interventions are discussed, including anti-oppressive policy considerations bearing on implementation, to promote equity within the field of outdoor therapy, and to build generations of gritty youth.