The benefits of 'nature' as a tool in improving mental health and maintaining psychological well-being: an ecological dynamics analysis

My background is in psychology and my first degree is in neuropsychology which is quite a scientific area and deals quite heavily with quantitative data. Since finishing my degree I have worked for the NHS in a forensic secure unit and in a drug and alcohol addiction centre. Having now worked in psychotherapeutic settings within the NHS I feel there seems to be an emphasis on medically treating the psychological problems and not necessarily addressing the underlying wellbeing issues. I feel that if these were addressed more adequately, more longer term coping mechanisms could be developed, this could be even something as simple as going for a walk if the person is feeling under stress. So I applied for this PhD because it is very much focussed on addressing mental health issues in a more holistic way. Although methodology wise it may prove to be somewhat out of my comfort zone in the 3 months since I started my way of thinking about treatment methods has expanded and I can see this is an exciting area of research. So my initial research brief was to explore the impact of green and blue spaces as alternatives to traditional landscapes used within formal counselling or psychotherapy, so, in order to do this, for the last 3 months I have been conducting a literature review into the background of this area