The Urge to ‘Touch Grass’: Why interest in ecotherapy for Australian youth is rising

Imagine you’re standing in the midst of the Australian bush, surrounded by jarrah giants. The daily noise of doomscrolls, message alerts and blaring TVs has been replaced with the soft rustle of wind through leaves, and you watch as tiny sparklers of marri flowers dance gently at its touch. The beat of your heart slows, and your lungs fill deeply with fresh air. The constant stresses of life quiet in your mind.

Ecotherapy is the holistic practice of mindfully connecting to nature to promote mental health and wellbeing. This can include activities such as immersing yourself in the forest (also known as forest bathing or shinrin-yoku), engaging in outdoor meditation, or participating in multi-day wilderness experiences.

Professionals at Australian nature-based programs have noticed an increase in interest in youth involvement.

“I think the increase in youth interest [in ecotherapy] probably is linked to the increase in distress in youth,” says wellness organisation Mindful in Nature founder Belinda McCawley.

Depression and anxiety are two of the most common chronic conditions in young people aged 15-24, with 1 in 4 suffering from anxiety and 1 in 6 from depression, according to self-reported data from the ABS 2022 National Health Survey (NHS). This is significantly more than those who suffer from, for example, asthma or diabetes.

‘Nature-deficit disorder’ is one proposed factor for the high rates of mental health issues in youth. This term refers to the negative physiological, social, psychological and spiritual impacts of a modern disconnect from nature, as coined by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

“With young people today, there’s such a disconnect,” says founder and educator of Nature Based Therapy Kit Kline. Kline emphasises the importance for young people to start to slowly engage with nature and says that this is something that ought to be better supported within healthcare and youth programs.

The disconnect from nature is particularly prevalent in the teenage years, as McCawley points out. “If you look at a child, a child intrinsically knows how to connect with nature. They’re in awe of all the things that they see, they see a butterfly and they'll stay with the butterfly for ages just being in awe and exploring its colour and its movement. So, we do this naturally as children; we just somewhere along the way forget, or maybe we haven't been given the opportunity to do it, or maybe we're distracted by things that give us a bigger hit, like social media,” says McCawley.

Social media has been proposed as one of the causes for the high rates of mental health issues and the rising interest in ecotherapy for youth.

“All generations have suffered their own challenges, including mental health, but social media has just amplified it. People are so connected to the digital world and less connected to the real world, themselves, their peers, and the natural world around them that we at Outward Bound see a huge increase in mental health issues,” says Outward Bound Head of Community, Ian Wells.

Wells notes that Outward Bound, which offers outdoor education for youth as a tool for personal, social and emotional growth, has seen an increase in calls from parents seeking coping mechanisms and program participation for their children.

Wells describes a complex relationship between youth and their phones, observed at Outward Bound. Facilitators on the majority of Outward Bound programs will remove participants’ phones. Of youth on an average five-day program Wells says, “On Monday they are petrified of giving up their link to the outside world as they see it, but by Friday they realise that it’s just contrived, their outside world is the people around them, like the people they’ve spent time with in the bush for the last week, and they don’t necessarily want to re-engage with the digital world.” He says that “some of them don’t, some of them just put it in their pocket, and some of them might pull it out on the bus, but very few people dive straight into their phones to see what they miss, most of them are reticent about it.”

Ironically online trends from youth like ‘silent walking’ which is an outdoor walk without the use of devices and the trending term ‘touch grass’ which means needing to reconnect with the real world after spending too much time in the digital one, suggest a desire from young people themselves to disconnect from technology and reconnect with nature for at least some of their time.

To prevent young people from the harmful impacts of social media, the Australian government has introduced a world-first social media ban for those under 16 this year. The ban will not protect those above 16, and there will be exemptions for certain platforms like messaging apps, online gaming platforms and services with a primary purpose of health or education, as has been indicated by the Minister for Communications.

The decision to remove social media from the lives of Australian youth has not been without critique, with some of the arguments against it including that it may further isolate vulnerable groups (like LGBTQ+ members) as raised by associate professor in psychology Dr Susanne Schweizer, and that it will hinder the ability for youth to engage in civic discourse and activism, as raised by Macquarie University Senior Lecturer, Dr Tai Neilson. This questions whether a ban is the best solution, or whether a more holistic view of mental health issues in youth is needed.

Kline suggests that a lack of connection to culture and Country is a contributing factor to the modern mental health crisis. Kline explains, “Part of the study program I run, I ask people where their ancestors are from, and a lot of people just don’t know. They just know where they were born and where their parents were born. And it’s like, well, let’s just go right back, where were your ancestors from, where are you indigenous to? And I think it’s really important to know that and to connect back on Country because I think again it’s all part of our well-being—knowing who we are and where we are from.”

Kline suggests that there is much we could learn from Indigenous philosophy. She embeds it into her work and includes it in her nature-based therapy education program.

“There is also an increase in ecological distress, so that's climate change distress,” says McCawley. “I also know that that's mostly around youth, and I just think it's probably because there's not as many climate sceptics in our youth.”

McCawley emphasises the positive impacts connecting to nature can have on the well-being of both humans and the environment: “For me, it's not only about improving the well-being of the people but improving the well-being of the planet. Because we're more connected with nature, we're more connected to our environment, and when we start these practices, we start to discover that we're not separate from nature, we’re a part of it.”

The picture painted by ecotherapy professionals Kline, McCawley, and Wells is one in which interest in ecotherapy for youth is rising in response to a modern world where young people are struggling with issues related to social media, cultural disconnect, and ecological distress.

To those looking to engage in it, “Nature connection doesn’t have to be going for long drives to the beach or the forest or really doing that big immersion”, Kline encourages. Kline says that although the benefits of full forest immersion are immense, there are also significant mental wellness benefits from simply going into your own backyard. She says: “It can be so subtle but so powerful”.

Sources:

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Reports. (2024, April 16). Health of young people. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/health-of-young-people

Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Algonquin Press.

Writer and photographer: Shannarra Lupardo

Editor: Jemima Pathak