Unpacking Relational Dignity: In Pursuit of an Ethic of Care for Outdoor Therapies

Abstract

Dignity is a universal principle that requires us to treat every person as having worth beyond who a particular person is or what they do. Dignity is a complex and sometimes contested idea, that at times can be compromised in health care and allegedly also within the practice of outdoor therapy. Outdoor therapies comprise a range of therapeutic approaches including nature-based therapy, adventure therapy, animal-assisted therapy, forest therapy, wilderness therapy, surf therapy, and more. Within the literature of outdoor therapies there has been limited research on ethics related to common understandings of care concepts such as relational dignity and human rights. The aim of this paper is therefore to unravel briefly whether dignity in general, and relational qualities of dignified care more particularly, might be a useful concept to apply in order to support an ethical practice in outdoor therapies.

Addressing ethical issues in outdoor health practice: a scoping review

“…This paper responds to calls from previous research about the lack of dialogue and research on ethics related to care in the OH sector. Previous research exploring ethics within the field has focused on a narrower group of 'outdoor therapies' such as forest therapy, adventure therapy (Harper & Fernee, 2022) and ecotherapy (King et al, 2022) or addressed specific ethical issues such as involuntary service user participation (Dobud, 2021) or gender and power relations (Mitten, 1994(Mitten, , 2020. This paper extends this scholarship through an investigation of ethical issues found in a broader range of OH approaches and identifies several key ethical themes that are common within the literature.…”

Adventure Therapy for Adolescents with Complex Trauma: A Scoping Review and Analysis

“…Human rights-based approaches (Harper & Fernee, 2022) to crafting the experience are likely to produce experiences that serve as lived models of not being trauma impacted, which a person can then seek to replicate. AT should, given its orientation to shared experience, participant empowerment, and nature immersion, be humane and human rights focused.…”

A tale of two systems; Polarising beliefs in adventure therapy

“…Like the CT field, AT seems divided between the event and harm perspectives when identifying the problems that it aims to resolve. While AT is guided by human rights (Harper & Fernee, 2022) it can sometimes be involuntary and coercive, therefore diminishing human rights (Magnuson et al, 2022). The Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Center (OBHC) has significant influence in the AT field although it mainly focuses its research on WT.…”