A Cen­sus of Out­door The­ra­pies: Por­tray­ing the Ca­na­di­an sce­ne

This stu­dy iden­ti­fied se­ven forms of the­ra­py con­duc­ted in the out­doors. Each form was de­fi­ned, di­stin­gu­is­hed by its uni­que ele­ments, and cle­ar­ly dif­fe­ren­tia­ted from re­crea­tio­nal, edu­ca­tio­nal, and de­ve­lo­p­men­tal pro­gramming in the out­doors. Using the­se di­vi­ding cri­te­ria, a cen­sus was con­duc­ted to iden­ti­fy the best prac­ti­ces of out­door the­ra­peu­tic pro­gramming in Ca­na­da and paint a pic­tu­re of the Ca­na­di­an pro­fes­si­on in 2021. As a re­sult of qua­li­ta­ti­ve in­ter­view data and quan­ti­ta­ti­ve sur­vey data, a con­ti­nu­um of out­door the­ra­py pro­gramming was crea­ted that de­linea­ted the­se se­ven uni­que forms bet­ween the two di­men­si­ons of chal­lenges (risk, con­flict, exer­cise) and in­di­vi­du­al na­tu­re im­mersi­on.