Ex­plo­ring Stress Ma­nage­ment Stra­te­gies Th­rough a Na­tu­re and Ad­ven­tur­eba­sed Pro­gram

An­xie­ty be­ing a very pr­e­va­lent re­ason for con­sul­ting with a fa­mi­ly phy­si­ci­an, se­ve­ral stu­dies have ex­ami­ned the be­ne­fits of using self-ma­nage­ment stra­te­gies to tre­at it.
The­se stra­te­gies in­clude phy­si­cal ac­ti­vi­ty, con­nec­tion with na­tu­re, so­cial sup­port, and me­di­ta­ti­on. The Aven­ture Vert Soi (AVS) na­tu­re and ad­ven­ture-ba­sed the­ra­py (NAT) pro­gram was de­ve­lo­ped to al­low par­ti­ci­pan­ts to ex­pe­ri­ment with the­se self-ma­nage­ment stra­te­gies. Using a mi­xed-me­thod re­se­arch pro­to­col, our pre-ex­pe­ri­men­tal pi­lot stu­dy ai­med to de­scri­be the evo­lu­ti­on of adults ex­pe­ri­en­cing mi­xed an­xie­ty-de­pres­si­ve dis­or­ders who have com­ple­ted this pro­gram. The data were coll­ec­ted th­rough two fo­cus groups and four ques­ti­on­n­aires fo­cu­sing on the symptom’s in­ten­si­ty, func­tion­al ca­pa­ci­ties, and how stron­gly par­ti­ci­pan­ts be­lie­ved in their abili­ty to ma­na­ge their an­xie­ty using the pro­po­sed self-ma­nage­ment stra­te­gies. While still ex­pe­ri­en­cing an­xie­ty, par­ti­ci­pan­ts felt more con­fi­dent about their abili­ty to cope and kept using the stra­te­gies th­ree months af­ter com­ple­ting the AVS NAT pro­gram.