The struggles of everyday life has a dramatic impact on people, some more than others. Sometimes their unfortunate burdens cannot be lessened by family or friends and they find themselves homeless. The inopportune citizens find themselves in homeless shelters across America. In Collier County, the St. Matthews House provides the homeless residents shelter and a program, that in over 80 percent of cases places them back into society within 90 days as an independent citizen.
One of the factors keeping the success rate from being 100 percent is stress. A sheltered resident carries an enormous weight of mental anguish from losing their careers, homes, and sometimes their family, while still having to focus on trying to regain employment, housing, and their family. By lowering the stress of the resident, they will have more of a focused attempt at becoming independent again, leaving homelessness in the past.
Government has a moral sense of responsibility to assist it’s residents in need, while making every attempt at finding low to no cost approaches to those needs. The county already provides parks for the community to experience the therapeutic effects of nature. Excursions into nature were found to have brought balance and relief from everyday unnatural stressors while also bringing understanding as a sense of place in the world as a whole (Chalquist, 2009). Ecotherapy brings a peaceful connection of the natural world to the human mind—and it’s free!
As a Columbia graduate, Michael Cohen created Project NatureConnect, a therapeutic approach in ecopsychology that bonds a person’s identity with nature settings through sensory inputs. Carolyn Rambosk, a licensed counselor of psychology and manager of the David Lawrence Center, Immokalee Branch, states that the Nature-nurture concept actually works for some people. There are many studies that reinforce the need to help our citizens in need through ecopsychology—a free opportunity.
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