PSU Social Sustainability Colloquium

DATE: Friday, April 15th

TIME: 2-4pm

WHERE: Urban Center Building Room 204 (above Seattle’s Best Coffee) Campus Map

NOTE: This discussion will be recorded on video and broadcast to our colleagues in Australia. It will also be available on YouTube and Earthsayers TV for dissemination. To view live, go to www.media.pdx.edu Live Streams and then 204.

VARIETIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL IDENTITY: THOUGHTS ON PSYCHOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Ecopsychology Journal

The New York Times called Thomas Doherty “the most prominent American advocate of a growing discipline known as ‘ecopsychology’.”

Dr. Thomas Joseph Doherty provides an overview of psychological perspectives on the natural environment and sustainability, including stories of his work in ecopsychology and the development of the Ecopsychology journal.

His talk focuses on moving beyond either-or conceptions of environmental identity toward an appreciation of a diversity of environmental world views, and how this can help us understand vulnerabilities to the psychological impacts of issues like global climate change and inform the design of pragmatic and innovative sustainability initiatives.

Thomas Joseph Doherty, PsyD

Presenter Bio: Thomas Doherty provides consultation on environmental identity and behavior change and specializes in working with people and organizations with ecological values He draws on his training in clinical and health psychology and his background as a wilderness therapist and professional whitewater rafting guide. In addition to his consultation practice in Portland, Thomas trains counselors at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecopsychology. Thomas helped author the American Psychological Association’s Climate Change Task Force Report in 2009 and his paper on the psychological impacts of global climate change will be published in the American Psychologist this June. Thomas has provided talks and workshops for organizations such as the American Psychological Association, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Natural Step USA, New Season’s Markets, the Bioneers, the Association of Oregon Recyclers, and the Oregon Counseling Association.

In addition to mentions in the NY Times, Thomas’s work has also been featured in the Oregonian, New Hampshire Public Radio, the Detroit Metro Times, Sustainability: The Journal of Record, Alternative and Complementary Therapies, the Monitor on Psychology, and in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In this low-cost Couples Workshop, Dr. Thomas Joseph Doherty will discuss the added pleasures and stresses that “green” issues bring to modern relationships. He’ll provide tips on how to talk about eco-values and lifestyle choices with your significant other, ways to accept and work with differences, and how to recognize when differing environmental agendas can become relationship deal-breakers. Along with an informative lecture, there will be time for personal reflection, couples discussions, and large group sharing.

This event is open to all kinds of couples and is not a therapy group.

Couples Workshop

Date: April 2nd, 2011
Time: 1 PM – 4:30 PM
Cost: $20 per person / $40 per couple
$25 / $50 after March 25th

Location:
3727 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd
Second Floor Conference Room
Google Map

To register see our website:
http://bit.ly/eXI7NI

For more information: Call 503.288.1213
or email clientcare@selfsustain.com

Previous Related Press:

• FEB 2010 :: Green Counselors • New Hampshire Public Radio
  

Thomas Doherty talked with Virginia Prescott from New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word Of Mouth as part of their “Next Green Thing” series about helping couples resolve their environmental disagreements.

See article and interview below as published originally HERE.

• JAN 2010 :: Thomas Doherty on the Tim Conway Jr. Show • KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles

Thomas Doherty talked with Los Angeles radio personality Tim Conway, Jr. from KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles about increased environmental awareness in couples. Tim shared his humorous take on “green fights” in modern marriages.

• JAN 2010 :: Preserving the Planet, Straining the Relationship: Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes

Thomas Doherty was interviewed in The New York Times about ecological concerns as they affect family and relationships.

See article below as published originally HERE.

Group releases sustainable branding study

by Christina Williams
Sustainable Business Oregon
Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 5:30pm PST

A coalition of business folks calling themselves the Sustainable Branding Collaborative released the results of a survey Thursday that aims to shed some light on how sustainable companies should approach branding and marketing in an age when consumers are wary of greenwashing.

The survey was conducted last November among a targeted group of sustainability-minded professionals and garnered 291 responses.

Not surprisingly, the group found that respondents were bullish on the prospect of sustainable business — even in the face of changing political leadership and a struggling economy. Eighty-three percent of those surveyed said the movement is still gaining steam and will play a bigger or much bigger role in the U.S. economy over next five years.

“I was wondering if people were losing the faith,” said Rich Bruer, veteran marketer and point person for the Sustainable Branding Collaborative. “That was overwhelmingly not the case.”

The survey also uncovered that the majority of respondents would prefer a company that doesn’t make any efforts — or claims — in the area of sustainability to a company that makes sustainability claims but falls short of delivering.

“People are sick and tired of greenwashing,” Bruer said.

The survey was conducted in partnership with market researcher Michael Midghall and is available for download from the collaborative’s website.

Bruer said the Sustainable Branding Collaborative is in “early beta,” having been formed last year. He expects the group will pursue clients seeking help with sustainable branding. The release of the survey marks the group’s formal launch.

The collaborative includes: Bruer; Midghall; Eric Brody of Shift Advantage; consultant Yvonne Chang; Thomas Joseph Doherty of Sustainable Self; Genevieve Marcherio of Red Lemon Creative; Michael Tevlin of Tevlin Strategic Communication; and Justin Yuen of FMYI.

“I’ve built an agency, I’ve done it that way,” said Bruer who co-founded high-tech public relations and marketing firm McClennahan Bruer Communications in 1993. “This is kind of straddling that line between (a group of solo practitioners) and a formal agency.”

Ecopsychology: Discovering the connection between sustainability and mental health with Thomas Doherty

Thomas Doherty holds two visions of the globe at an Antioch New England speaking event in December. (Photo by Hanna Wheeler)

What’s the connection between mental health and sustainability? That’s one of the many questions that the growing field of ecopsychology explores.

Ecopsychology has gained recognition thanks to the work of psychologist Thomas Doherty of Portland, Oregon. He’s the founder and editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal Ecopsychology, the first peer-reviewed journal to focus on the connections between environmental issues and mental health.

He served as a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) Climate Change Task Force, which brought focus to the relationship between psychology and global climate change. He’s also the associate coordinator of Ecopsychology Studies at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School in Portland. Through his private practice, Sustainable Self, he offers counseling for individuals, couples and organizations. He also serves as a consultant and organizes workshops across the country on topics of ecopsychology.

But what is ecopsychology? Doherty said ecopsychology “situates psychology in a natural environmental context.” The term was coined by author and scholar Theodore Roszak, the man behind the term “counter-culture.” In the early years, ecopsychology did have a counter-culture quality, but a growing number of professionals, writers and researchers are bringing it into the mainstream.

Doherty grew up in Buffalo, New York. He received his BA from Columbia University and his doctorate in clinical psychology from Antioch University New England. It was his experience as a river guide in the Grand Canyon and his work as a wilderness therapy leader that opened his eyes to our multifaceted connections to nature.

“I was observing people’s identify-formation in an outdoor setting,” he said. “So when I was exposed to the idea of [ecopsychology], it made intuitive sense to me.”

During counseling sessions, Doherty invites people to talk the sustainability of their lifestyles and emotions. “I’ll talk about sustainability and health interchangeably. [Sustainability] doesn’t just mean carbon footprint but how you think about your life,” he said.

He also builds dialogue through the journal Ecopsychology, which, according to its description, “examines the psychological, spiritual, and therapeutic aspects of human-nature relationships, concern about environmental issues, and responsibility for protecting natural places and other species.”

“There haven’t traditionally been a lot of venues for this kind of work,” said Doherty. “Part of our job is to be rigorous in terms of the scholarship and research, and to bring these ideas under empirical scrutiny,” he said.

The journal also examines ecopsychology research and policy implications. “It brings this work to the floor,” said Doherty. “Rather than being separate silos with researchers in the labs and policy makers in the government.”

The journal’s audience includes academic writers, students, mental health professionals and other interested readers. At the same time, Doherty said the journal works to “avoid being so jargonized that it isn’t relevant.”

The journal is an example of Doherty’s inter-disciplinary approach, which he says is sometimes difficult. “It’s the nature of the western academic tradition,” he said. “We have a whole academic system built on specialization. It’s based on separate departments.”

The reason for this, Doherty says, is our “reductionist approach” to thinking. “Science does a great job of taking the world apart but doesn’t do a great job of putting it back together again,” he said.

Doherty also helps build common ground for people outside of academic circles. “It tires me to see this ongoing battle for hearts and minds by industry groups and environmental groups. It’s forcing people to choose sides,” he said.

“People aren’t going to agree, but how do we figure out a way for them to collaborate? The only way forward is to have more of a dialogue,” said Doherty.

Central to his work is studying environmental identity, which Doherty describes as “the way people think of themselves in relation to the natural world.” Doherty says it’s a misconception that people either have an environmental identity or they don’t. “How do we get past these simplistic dichotomies?” he asked.

In the end, everyone has some sort of environmental identity. “I don’t know anyone in my life who was against nature or pro-extinction,” said Doherty.

Doherty brought this way of thinking to the APA task force, which last year released a 230-page report titled “Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change.”

“My hope is people will accept that there are psychological impacts from climate change,” said Doherty. “Having it written up in journals will allow students and teachers to teach that.”

Doherty says that the APA report legitimizes bringing the emotional realm into the climate change debate. Before, psychologists would have rejected these ideas as a serious topic of debate. “That won’t happen now. It prevents that feeling that connection to nature is just not validated,” said Doherty.

“At the core, that’s what ecopsychology was all about. The paradox is it’s taken all this environmental degradation to turn that around,” he said.

Some recent projects

• Helping to advise the Green Sports Alliance, which was formed to improve the sustainability profile of major league sports teams and to use their community leverage to influence their fan base.
• Couples environmental issues talks (“It’s not about picking sides. It creates a forum for people to talk about that and improve acceptance of each other.” –Thomas Doherty)
• Working with Carol Saunders to develop a conservation psychology training at Antioch University New England
• Helping to develop a masters program for ecopsychology at Lewis & Clark

What he’s been reading lately

• The Politics of the Earth by John S. Dryzek
• Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme
• Global Warming’s Six Americas by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication

Thomas in Profil

“ We want to explore how people experience nature, so that they cultivate

an intact emotional connection to nature and act responsibly in it”

Thomas Doherty was featured in the Austrian & Swiss Press in:

• SonntagsZeitung February 2010

• Süddeutsche March 2010

• Profil April 2010

ABOUT PLAY AGAIN

Still from Play Again

One generation from now most people in the U.S. will have spent more time in the virtual world than in nature. New media technologies have improved our lives in countless ways. Information now appears with a click. Overseas friends are part of our daily lives. And even grandma loves Wii.

But what are we missing when we are behind screens? And how does this impact our children’s well being, our society and the very future of our planet?

At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, PLAY AGAIN explores the changing balance between the virtual and natural worlds. Is our connection to nature disappearing down the digital rabbit hole?

This documentary follows six teenagers who, like the “average American child,” spend five to fifteen hours a day behind screens. PLAY AGAIN unplugs these teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure – no electricity, no cell phone coverage, no virtual reality.

Through the voices of children and leading experts like Richard Louv, Juliet Schor, Bill McKibben, Susan Linn, Diane Levin, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Charles Jordan, Gary Small and David Suzuki, PLAY AGAIN looks at how the imbalance between the virtual and natural worlds impacts our children’s well being, our society and the very future of our planet.

Ground Productions is now getting ready to release PLAY AGAIN, a documentary that investigates the consequences of a childhood removed from nature.

PLAY AGAIN offers solutions and encourages action for a sustainable future.

See article below as published originally HERE.

This Side of Paradise

Discovering Why the Human Mind Needs Nature

By Eric Jaffe

Today, Central Park seems as essential to Manhattan as the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or Woody Allen. But when the street grid for the island was first mapped out in 1811, no plans were made for the 843-acre green sanctuary at its center. The commissioners in charge of designing the city set aside remarkably few parcels of parkland. They didn’t think the residents would need it. After all, they reasoned, the Hudson and East rivers that flank Manhattan render the island “in regard to health and pleasure … peculiarly felicitous.”

A few brave souls — we’ll call them “brave,” though other descriptors come to mind — find recreation in these waters today. The rest of us are fortunate that the city reconsidered, and that the man who designed Central Park had an understanding, far ahead of his time, of nature’s psychological impact. “It is a scientific fact,” wrote Frederick Law Olmsted in 1865, seven years after his plan for the park was chosen, “that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character … is favorable to the health and vigor of men” (Hartig, 2007).

As awareness of humanity’s relationship with the environment has increased in the past few decades — buoyed of late by the larger popular concern about climate change — so has empirical evidence for nature’s psychological benefits. Back in 1865, Olmsted thought exposure to natural environments would prevent a “softening of the brain,” “irascibility,” and “melancholy.” Nearly 150 years later, scientists now know that nature has a remarkable ability to restore attention, that it soothes aggression, and that it may even ease mild depression.

Reinvigorating the Brain through A.R.T.
The most significant understanding of nature’s salutary effect on the human mind has come through studies of attention. The foundation of this work is the attention restoration theory, or A.R.T., set forth by APS Fellow Stephen Kaplan of the University of Michigan. The theory originated in the 1980s, says Kaplan, when he, APS Fellow Rachel Kaplan, and some of their students noticed that people had an astounding preference for scenes depicting natural environments. Kaplan and his collaborators soon discovered there was much more to nature than just a pretty face — they found that exposure to these scenes had a profound restorative effect on the brain’s ability to focus.

The tenets of A.R.T were established in a 1995 paper by Kaplan. Briefly put, a person can engage in two types of attention: involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary attention is a rather effortless form of engagement with the world. Voluntary (or directed) attention, in contrast, requires a good deal of focus and energy — it plays a central role in problem solving, for instance — and is therefore susceptible to fatigue. Voluntary attention can be restored through sleep, but it can also be restored during waking hours when a person’s involuntary attention becomes highly engaged, essentially giving direct attention a breather. Kaplan and his collaborators found that nature is especially conducive to our involuntary engagement.

Nature’s ability to restore human attention has since been supported by a wide range of psychological studies. In a study coauthored by Kaplan and led by Marc Berman, for instance, the researchers compared the restorative effects of natural environments with those of the city (Berman,  Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008). In one trial, 38 study participants were given the “backwards digit-span task” — an established test of voluntary attention. The participants then performed a task that fatigued their voluntary attention and were randomly assigned to walk through either downtown Ann Arbor or the city’s arboretum, a substantial haven of trees and wide lawns. Afterwards, the participants took the backwards digit-span task again. Sure enough, the scores were significantly higher after the walks through the arboretum, as the researchers reported in Psychological Science.

“The way I think of it is that our ancestors evolved in a nature-filled environment,” says Kaplan. “[Such places] should feel more comfortable, more relaxed, more like home. It’s not a big leap between that and being more competent, less distracted.” In the January 2010 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, Kaplan and Berman summarize 13 of the most influential A.R.T.-related papers (Kaplan & Berman, 2010). The findings (some of which will be discussed below in more detail) show nature’s impact on a wide variety of cognitive activity, from dampening road rage to boosting the spirits and attentional capacities of cancer patients. The authors also explain why nature does a better job restoring directed attention than another stimulus that might seem suited to distracting the mind: television.

Rather than lightening the load on direct attention, television actively captures it in an attempt to prevent the viewer from changing the channel (Mander, 1977). As a result, Kaplan and Berman report, researchers have found a direct correlation between the amount of time someone spends in front of the television and that person’s irritability. In the short-term, TV shows provide an escape from everyday trials, but over the long-term such escapism prevents the mind from engaging in much-needed reflection.

“The fascination that seems to be important in the recovery of attention is nothing like what happens on television,” Kaplan says. “Since nature is not only fascinating in this soft and gentle way but is also pleasurable, that means you can more effectively think about things that are not comfortable.”

Positive Pockets of Green
A logical extension of attention restoration theory is that people deprived of nature will display behaviors caused by weary minds. Shortly after his influential paper on A.R.T. appeared in 1995, two of Kaplan’s disciples decided to test this conclusion. The hypothesis laid out by Frances Kuo and William Sullivan of the University of Illinois was a marvel of logic and sequence: If fatigued attention is related to irritability, and irritability leads to aggression, then perhaps people deprived of nature’s restorative qualities would be overly aggressive (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001).

Kuo and Sullivan tested their premise on 145 female residents of a public housing complex in urban Chicago. The complex provided natural control and study groups: Some residents lived in buildings that overlooked “pockets of green,” while others had a view of only bleak concrete. The researchers reported significantly lower levels of aggression and violence in residents with apartments near nature than in those who looked onto barren lands. When handling disputes with their partners, women in the nature group used fewer “psychologically aggressive conflict tactics” and fewer “mildly violent conflict tactics” than those whose randomly assigned housing unit was denied exposure to nature.

Aggressiveness has been linked to impulsivity, so it’s not surprising that in a contemporaneous study, Kuo, Sullivan, and Illinois colleague Andrea Taylor found a relationship between exposure to nature and self-control (Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002). In studying 169 girls living in the same housing complex, the researchers found that those with greener views performed better than those deprived of nature on several tasks related to discipline. The former group scored higher on tests of concentration, inhibited impulsivity, and ability to delay gratification.

“Those data are astounding,” says Kaplan of the series of public housing studies performed by Kuo and Sullivan. “That’s a miserable environment, and for [nature] to make a difference in it, that was awesome.”

The findings on aggression and self-discipline appear to transfer out of the home and onto the road. In a 1998 paper, a group of Texas A&M researchers led by Russ Parsons compared the physiological responses of subjects who watched a video of driving through nature with those who watched a drive through more built-up environments (Parsons et al., 1998). Not only did the nature-road group display lower levels of stress, they also recovered more quickly from the stress they did experience.

A related study of road rage tested the ability of subjects to tolerate frustration in various roadside settings (Cackowski & Nasar, 2003). Subjects watched one of three driving videos — one with dense roadside vegetation, one with sparse roadside vegetation, and one mixed — then were asked to solve an unsolvable anagram. The task was designed to enhance frustration, and indeed, subjects whose road trip had taken them through dense vegetation worked on the aggravating task for roughly 90 seconds longer than those in the other groups.

Virtual Nature
The recognition of nature’s psychological value has informed broader discussions on public health and even inspired practical applications. Building on studies showing the psychosomatic benefits of green space, a U.K. research duo reported that populations living near natural environments had less income-related health inequality than groups living away from green space — prompting calls for greener infrastructure and community planning (Mitchell & Popham, 2008). The design of Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, an Oregon hospital rebuilt in 2008, was informed by a now-classic paper that appeared in Science in 1984: Researcher Roger Ulrich found that patients whose hospital window overlooked nature recorded shorter postoperative stays, required less potent pain medication, and evaluated their nurses more positively after gall bladder surgery than patients who looked onto a brick wall (Ulrich, 1984).

The heightened awareness of nature’s health benefits is tempered by threats to the environment posed by modernity — from the clearance of green space for buildings to the destruction caused by global climate change. To see how such changes might affect future well-being, several psychologists have begun to study whether technology can salvage some of nature’s healthful properties. Three researchers from the University of Washington, led by Peter Kahn Jr., review some of this work in Current Directions in Psychological Science (Kahn, Severson, & Ruckert, 2009).

One of the outlined studies, led by Kahn, compared three types of nature interactions available in a modern office. Kahn and his coauthors conducted tests on three groups of 30: In one group, subjects sat near a glass window that overlooked a nature scene; in another, they viewed a similar scene on a high-definition plasma television; and in a third, they sat near an empty wall. The researchers measured heart-rates to gauge how quickly subjects in each setting recovered from stressors.

Predictably, Kahn and his colleagues found the glass window to be significantly more restorative than the blank wall (Kahn et al., 2008). When the researchers compared the results of subjects in the plasma and blank wall groups, however, they found no significant differences in recovery to stress. This came as something of a surprise. In a previous field study involving Kahn and led by Batya Friedman, plasma screens depicting a natural scene were installed on walls in real-life offices, and workers asked about the experience over a 16-week period reported higher well-being, cognitive functioning, and connection to the environment.

When the two studies are considered together, “the plasma nature window appears better than no nature but not as good as actual nature,” Kahn and his coauthors concluded in Current Directions. Humans will “adapt to the loss of actual nature,” they continued, but in doing so they’ll suffer “psychological costs.”

This conclusion was recently supported in a study led by F. Stephan Mayer, a professor of psychology at Oberlin College, on whether exposure to nature aided the ability to reflect on life’s troubles (Mayer, Frantz, Bruehlman-Senecal, & Dolliver, 2009). Mayer and his colleagues asked subjects to consider a relatively minor problem in their lives, then split them into one of several groups. Over the course of three separate tests, some subjects reflected on their “loose end” while strolling through either natural or urban settings, and others did so while viewing videos of these settings.

The researchers concluded that exposure to nature increased a subject’s ability to resolve a minor personal problem, but that actual nature aided this resolution more than virtual nature.

“It’s not as if you can replace actual nature with virtual nature,” says Mayer, who interprets the results to mean that people have an innate kinship to the natural world.  “At the same time, it does seem as if virtual nature can have benefits. Some of those benefits could be very useful, in terms of people who are hospitalized — if they’re not able to be outside, they could benefit from exposure to virtual nature.”

From Social Movement to Science
The type of work done by Mayer and Kahn falls at least partially under the umbrella of ecopsychology. Largely embraced by therapists, ecopsychology has been considered more of a social movement or worldview than a scientific discipline. But a so-called “second-generation” of ecopsychologists have emerged with a desire to ground the movement’s theories in an empirical foundation.

“As I see it, it seems as if ecopsychology had clinical aspects to it initially, maybe even to some extent a philosophical aspect,” says Mayer, who runs the Ecopsychology Research Project at Oberlin. “Then you have people coming out of a more social psychology tradition with a strong empirical basis, trying to take these general ideas and test them in a more systematic way.”

This progression is apparent in a forthcoming book coedited by Kahn and Patricia Hasbach, a clinical therapist in Oregon. The volume’s title, Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species, was chosen as a deliberate announcement of ecopsychology’s empirical “re-visioning,” says Hasbach. “In sandwiching the word totems” — a reference to ecopsychology’s symbolic, experiential roots — “between science and technological species,” she says, “we’re embracing … the recognition of the place of science for furthering the field.”

Thomas Doherty, a clinical psychologist in Portland, Oregon, who co-teaches an ecotherapy class with Hasbach at Lewis & Clark University, seconds ecopsychology’s push to embrace empirical methods. Editor of the year-old, peer-reviewed journal, Ecopsychology, Doherty says his goal with the publication is to “move away from the stereotype” of ecopsychology being a non-scientific endeavor. In the lead editorial of the inaugural issue, he wrote that the new generation of ecopsychology “recognizes that tending data sets and tending souls are not mutually exclusive” (Doherty, 2009).

Doherty would like to see more controlled studies on ecotherapy’s efficacy. “I’m primarily a clinician,” he says, “but I can’t function without research.” To date, such studies have been limited. The most promising was released in 2007 by Mind, a mental health organization in England that commissioned researchers at the University of Essex to study the therapeutic influence of “green exercise” on people suffering from mild depression. The researchers found that activities like nature strolls and gardening projects benefited several aspects of well-being more than did exercise in a shopping mall (Mind, 2007). In other words, a walk in the park does a body good — just as Olmsted said.

As a model of empirical rigor, the report left room for improvement — the subjects of one study were members of Mind — but as a symbol of ecopsychology’s maturation, it reflected a move toward greener pastures. “In some ways, because of ecopsychology’s counter-culture origins, it lost some traction as the world moved on to embrace scientific inquiry,” says Hasbach, “Admittedly, some things often discussed in ecopsychology are very hard to measure. We’re trying to get more creative in how to do that.” ♦

References

Berman, M.G., Jonides, J., & Kaplan, S. (2008). The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature. Psychological Science, 19, 1207-1212.

Cackowski, J.M. & Nasar, J.L. (2003). The restorative effects of roadside vegetation. Environment and Behavior, 35, 736-751.

Doherty, T.J. (2009). A peer reviewed journal for ecopsychology. Ecopsychology, 1, 1-7.

Hartig, T. (2007). Three steps to understanding restorative environments as health resources. In C. Ward-Thompson & P. Travlou (Eds.), Open space: People space (p. 165) New York: Taylor and Francis.

Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Gill, B., Severson, R.L., Freier, N.G., Feldman, E.N. (2008). A plasma display window?  The shifting baseline problem in a technologically-mediated natural world. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28, 192-199.

Kahn, P.H., Jr., Severson, R.L., & Ruckert, J.H. (2009).The human relation with nature and technological nature. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 37-42.

Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169-182.

Kaplan, S., & Berman, M.G. (2010). Directed attention as a common resource for executive functioning and self-regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 43-57.

Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C. (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner city: Effects of environment via mental fatigue. Environment and Behavior, 33, 543-571.

Mander, J. (1977). Four arguments for the elimination of television. New York: Harper Collins.

Mayer, F.S., Frantz, C.M., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., & Dolliver, K. (2009). Why is nature beneficial? The role of connectedness to nature. Environment and Behavior, 41, 607-643.

Mind. (2007, May). Ecotherapy: The green agenda for mental health. London: Author.

Mitchell, R., & Popham, F. (2008). Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: An observational population study. Lancet, 372, 1655-1660.

Parsons R., Tassinary, L.G., Ulrich, R.S., Hebl, M.R., & Grossman-Alexander, M. (1998). The view from the road: Implications for stress recovery and immunization. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18, 113-139.

Taylor, A.F., Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C. (2002). Views of nature and self-discipline: Evidence from inner city children. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 49-63.

Ulrich, R.S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224, 420-421.

See article below as published originally HERE.

Greening our minds

How nature nurtures the brain

By Larry Gabriel

Last week’s sunshine and warmth had me out raking and picking up the yard in anticipation of getting my garden growing. I even started some seeds germinating indoors and wondered if it was too early to put lettuce seeds in the ground. Lettuce does well in cooler weather and is one of the first things to come up each spring.

It feels good to get out and do these things after being cooped up inside for the winter. As I walked around the neighborhood with my dog, I ran into a few others who were preparing their yards or flower beds for the coming season. Everyone was smiling, beaming as they went about their work, obviously feeling good.

That’s one of the great things about gardening, it makes you feel good. There’s something about connecting with nature and nurturing life that brings it out. The Detroit Food Justice Task Force, a group that promotes urban agriculture, believes that too. The organization’s list of shared basic values includes the concept of Earth connection, which stems from the belief that there is a “spiritual, comforting and even healing component as people work with soil in an outdoor environment.”

That’s a pretty lofty idea; however, it is in harmony with the relatively new and growing science of ecopsychology. Ecopsychology is based on the idea that there is a deeply bonded and reciprocal relationship between humans and nature. The Earth-connection value of the DFJTF taps into part of ecopsychology’s thrust.

“Community gardens are beneficial in terms of getting people to interact in positive ways,” says Marc Berman, a researcher in cognitive psychology and industrial engineering at the University of Michigan. “Our research shows interacting with nature is good for cognitive functioning, and in growing your own food you might get some healthy produce out of it. It’s hard to think of a downside. It’s vital, though, to get the people actually living in a community involved in the developmental stages. Residents need to have ownership. If you get people interested and involved it should lead to all the those benefits mentioned.”

Berman ran an experiment in which a group of subjects took a three-mile walk in the Ann Arbor Nichols Arboretum, a wooded area with gardens and trails. He had another group walk along a busy street. Subsequent testing showed that the group that took the walk in the Arb performed better on tests of mental focus and memory than the group that walked along the city street. Soft fascinations (rustling leaves, babbling brooks) found in nature increase focus and memory, while the harsh stimuli (car horns, billboards) of an urban setting cause a cognitive overload. That may seem obvious to some, but as Detroiters reshape and refocus the city, scientific data will help convince politicians and power brokers just how important green spaces are.

It’s obvious that the city plans green spaces as a way of developing much of the abundant vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Mayor Dave Bing mentioned it several times in his State of the City address. Bing never mentioned urban agriculture as part of that plan, although City Council is considering it in rewriting zoning laws for Detroit. And various plans offered by independent groups all see gardening and agriculture as vital parts of a new Detroit. It’s all good according to ecopsychology, although there are different strata of goodness between looking out your window at trees and getting your hands dirty in the garden.

So if we’re all on the same page here, why do we need the science to prove the importance of greening? Because it will give a firm basis to thinking about natural settings and gardens as part of a permanent solution rather than a placeholder until something else comes along. We don’t need to again give away our greenery for industrial development.

And maybe we should have our police officers out there with hoes and rakes. Berman points to research showing that environment matters in crime fighting. Studies in the Netherlands and in Lowell, Mass., tested what is called the Broken Window Theory, which has become part of the crime-fighting strategy in New York and other cities. The theory holds that people in an orderly environment will behave in an orderly manner, and that a disorderly environment promotes disorderly behavior. The two studies in high-crime areas showed that an increase in police presence was less effective in decreasing crime than cleaning up debris and fixing broken-down buildings. If you added gardening too, these experts predict that it would rise to another level.

“In gardening, the potential benefits include self-confidence and self-efficacy. Gardening is restorative and has some of same benefits as going into a wilderness area,” says Dr. Thomas Doherty, an ecopsychologist at the Sustainable Self clinic in Portland, Ore. “It’s a reflexive, meditative activity.”

That beats where your thinking goes when dodging cars, listening to horns blare, taking in billboards, stepping on broken glass, etc.

Dr. Janet Swim, a professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, adds: “There is a sense of efficacy, the ability to do something that you can’t do elsewhere. You develop a sense of pride in what you’re doing. It’s an alternative to the materialistic world, an attachment to other sources of well-being. The more time people spend in natural setting, the less materialistic they are.”

Oops, that’s a slip. If gardening makes people less materialistic it’ll be harder to get the bigwigs behind that. Our economic drivers depend on selling more and more stuff to people — stuff you probably don’t need and probably can’t use while hoeing a row of greens. But there are plenty of other benefits to help bring folks around. The website of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois is full of such data (lhhl.illinois.edu). A sample of recent findings touted there includes: Green activities reduce ADHD symptoms; the right residential landscaping can discourage crime; green residential landscaping strengthens communities, and, my favorite, adding trees near residences can reduce domestic violence. LHHL’s Capacity to Learn study, which examines the effect of schoolyard nature on children’s learning and academic achievement, might be useful as Detroit Public Schools retools for the future.

Ecopsychology’s concerns are far wider than just the effect of gardening and nature on your mental well-being. And Berman cautions that not everyone responds in the same way to any one stimulus. The field of study is also about complex systems and how humans fit in as opposed to standing outside and manipulating nature. But there is plenty of food for thought just in looking at how we can help heal hurting individuals through some rather simple means, and add to some bigger solutions for the city.

In the meantime, we all can grow a little something in the yard or in a planter, and look out for our own mental balance. I’ve already eaten chives and kale that that survived the cold weather — although parsley, which usually makes it through winter, doesn’t seem to have made it this year. It felt really good to have fresh stuff from the garden already. And it always feels good while fixing dinner to go out in the yard and harvest something rather than jumping in the car and driving to the store to pay for something shipped from hundreds or thousands of miles away. You can’t do it all at once, but a few steps to the yard are giant steps in the right direction.

See article below as published originally HERE.

Going Green Without the Guilt

How to conquer eco-guilt while reaching your green potential

:: By Polly Campbell

The guilt gripped me the moment I threw the plastic bottle into the garbage can, and it got worse when I watched my friend fish the bottle out and toss it in the recycling bin located 20 feet down the airport concourse.

It isn’t a new feeling — this eco-guilt — the emotion that rises in me when I feel like I haven’t done enough to save the planet. It happened again the other night when the waiter packed my leftovers in a Styrofoam box instead of paper. And, it surfaces when I use a paper towel instead of pulling out the microfiber rag.

Usually, I’m a pretty good recycler. We conserve energy. Limit our waste. But when I think about all that needs to be done — all that I could do — to develop more sustainable living practices, I do feel overwhelmed and guilty. And I’m not alone.

More people are feeling sad, bad, burdened, guilty, frustrated and even scared when it comes to their efforts to preserve, protect and honor the environment, says Leslie Garrett, author of The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide to a Better, Kinder, Healthier World and a speaker, columnist and blogger at Gaiam and www.virtuousconsumer.com.

Stages of eco-emotion

The range of emotions people experience when considering their impact on the environment is not unlike the stages of grief as described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, Garrett says.

It often starts with denial. We begin by believing the environmental issues can’t be as bad as the media portrays them. Later we feel shock, the “Oh-my-gosh-this-is-real-why-aren’t-we-doing more” stage, followed by despair that we can never do enough to make a difference.

“This is when you need to get a certain perspective and realize you cannot control everything, otherwise you’ll just be paralyzed,” Garrett says. “Just control what you can.”

Once we begin to acknowledge our own power and realize that we can make a difference, we move into acceptance. This is a healthier, happier, more productive stage.

Coping with guilt

Ultimately, though, all this emotion is a positive thing, says psychologist Thomas Joseph Doherty, who teaches at Lewis and Clark College and who specializes in helping clients with ecological and socially conscious values. It’s a reminder that we do care about the environment.

The guilt — the pain we feel — evolves out of the connection we have to the natural world, Doherty says. And by recognizing our relationship to the natural world, we’re more likely to nurture both the environment and ourselves.

Instead of feeling guilty, Doherty suggests giving yourself a break. Notice the things you are doing to help, and celebrate the connection you have to the natural world. Act with gentleness and compassion toward yourself and all living things.

“It makes no sense to run ourselves down and then think we can care for the earth,” Doherty says. “We are not separate from nature; we are part of the ecosystem. Caring for that environment means caring for yourself.”

Renewing your connection

When you shift your focus from what you’re doing wrong to the positive difference you are making, you’ll reconnect with the natural world in a more positive way.

Connecting with the environment doesn’t mean you need to pull on a backpack and head for the hills. It can be as simple as watching a sunrise, looking out the window at the flowers in your garden or taking a short stroll in a park during your lunch break, Doherty says.

Even just a few minutes outdoors will leave you feeling better. Numerous studies show that a connection to nature eases stress and promotes well-being. It also fosters mindful awareness, which contributes to a more earth-friendly lifestyle.

“When people are more conscious, they are more aware of their responsibility and more empowered because they realize they can make a difference with many individual acts,” says Doherty.

Sustainable baby steps

When you’re inspired to adopt some new sustainable living practices, go slow, say Doherty and Garrett. Too often people feel like they must make big changes overnight. They end up being overwhelmed or burned out. Often, they feel deprived.

Sustainability isn’t about deprivation, Doherty says. It’s not about giving up something you love, or living with less. Living an environmentally responsible life is really about simplifying, and that often breeds greater levels of satisfaction and happiness, he adds.

One of the first steps toward living a more sustainable life starts with your vote, Garrett says. Our leaders impact everything from fuel emission standards to bike paths and parks. By electing people who are pro-environment, you will make a difference, she says.

Next, make gradual changes in your household. Many things, such as switching from electric power to wind or replacing toxic cleaners with vinegar and water, mean little change in your day-to-day operations — you’ll still have heat if you switch to wind power, for example — but the environmental benefits are profound.

Doherty and Garrett also offer these other suggestions:

• Pack lunches in reusable containers.
• Walk or ride your bike more often.
• Buy secondhand, organic or natural-fiber and fair trade products that are earth friendly and socially responsible. Gaiam’s Live Green and Shop sections offer more information.

Check out the Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy site www.eere.energy.gov for information about energy-saving programs, tax credits and other resources.

Finally, Doherty says, celebrate the changes you’ve already made and your growing connection to the planet.

“It’s really just a matter of making choices,” Garrett says, “of either starting a compost pile or throwing the banana peel in the garbage; of buying the locally grown apples at a farmers’ market or buying apples from South America in the grocery store. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If you don’t do well one day, just do better the next time.”