Close Reading
Bella Jensen
Colt 360
Close Reading Final Project
The environment can be extremely beneficial to those suffering from illnesses all across the board. However, there has been a significant amount of research produced to learn about the healing benefits for those suffering from post effects of cancer treatment. In the article, Outdoor adventure therapy to increase physical activity in young adult cancer survivors by Elizabeth Gill, Marni Goldenberg, Heather Starnes, and Suzanne Phelan, these researchers have taken the time to undermine if outdoor physical activity places a positive impact on a selected group of young adult cancer survivors.
To test this hypothesis, the group of researchers took a large group of YACS (young adult cancer survivors) and placed them in a 7 day outdoors camp. “The outdoor adventure therapy organization studied was First Descents, which is a nonprofit outdoor adventure therapy organization that provides free week-long experiences in outdoor adventure therapy, including surfing, whitewater kayaking, and rock climbing. Throughout the week-long program, participants are encouraged to push past their fear or 2 reservations in order to embrace new outdoor adventure challenges throughout the week. Camp leaders are trained to foster the outdoor adventure therapy experience organically throughout the day’s activities and in nightly recaps during campfires” (Gill 2016 pg.2). This camp aims to improve the participants’ lives both within the short duration of the week, as well as long term in their everyday lives.
In order to test this study, if outdoor therapy truly does help, the researchers tested the participants PA levels through a screening after every physical activity experience. “The scale used to measure PA was the 7-Day PA Recall (PAR), a validated quantitative questionnaire that was conducted over the telephone by a trained interviewer in order to collect data on PA (including minutes of different PA intensities and total kilocalories of energy expenditure), and hours of sleep over the course of the past seven days (Sallis et al., 1985). The 7-Day PAR was originally developed for use in the Stanford Five-City Project in 1985 and has been widely used in epidemiologic, clinical, and behavior change studies” (Sarkin et al., 1997).
After the study was fully concluded, they found that the week-long outdoor therapy camp placed a significant effect on raising PA levels in YACS patients. These findings are quite incredible and could be very important to our future within both mental health and the physical health of patients in our future. The connection to our environment as humans has proven to be extremely necessary over and over again in countless studies. This is why it’s so extremely important for our humanity to move forward with caution and to truly do our best to protect our natural environment in order to continue to receive healing from all of its elements.
Not only does this article connect with my own research that I’ve been conducting, but also has many connections with the material that we’ve been studying in class. For example, in the movie Don’t Look Up, all of the civilians in the movie acted like the asteroid that was going to hit the Earth was unimportant and continued to live their daily lives. Since the asteroid wasn’t super important in that moment of time, they viewed it as something that didn’t need immediate attention. This is the exact same principle that we face with many problems within our world, specifically mental health. Since these patients didn’t have a life threatening problem in our current present, most people don’t view it as extremely viable that we try and resolve this problem. However, if we don’t continue to preserve the natural world around us, so many will be impacted extremely negatively in their mental and physical health. In fact, physical health directly correlates with mental health and that was partially what the research was trying to prove. This article is a great start to explaining and showing the viability of what the natural world around us can do and can in turn hopefully open readers eyes to the urgency of making a change in preserving our world today.
Gill, Elizabeth et al. “Outdoor Adventure Therapy to Increase Physical Activity in Young Adult Cancer Survivors.” Journal of psychosocial oncology 34.3 (2016): 184–199. Web.
