By Wilson Criscione, Inlander, June 5, 2019.
Dr. Robert Zarr steps into the patient room and sees a teenage girl. Lately, the 17-year-old has been experiencing repeated panic attacks, giving her so much chest pain that she had to be rushed to the emergency room each time.
She's looking for answers from Dr. Zarr. Instead, it's Zarr who asks a question.
"Do you have a way to spend time outside?" he says.
"Well, there's this hammock at my dad's house," she replies.
"What about lying there for a while, and just noticing the leaves?" Zarr suggests.
The girl says she could do that. So Zarr writes out the prescription: Once a week, on Wednesdays after school, the 17-year-old is to lie on the hammock and look up at the trees, listen to the wind and feel nature around her.
By her next visit, everything has changed. She isn't going to the ER anymore for panic attacks. Her anxiety is down. She feels confident.
These so-called "nature prescriptions" are becoming a new trend in medicine. While it's not a revolutionary idea for doctors to tell patients to spend time outside, there's a national movement for a more deliberate, intentional way for doctors to prescribe patients to spend time in nature, much like they would for a drug. The prescriptions include a place, an activity, a frequency and a dose. And as society becomes more glued to their screens, these prescriptions may be more important than ever.
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