Forest bathing in outdoor green spaces: Treating clients with eating disorders

The recent use of non-clinical, outdoor green spaces as an effective therapeutic modality to promote biopsychosocial health and quality of life—a practice sometimes referred to as forest bathing (Li, 2018)—has created new opportunities for occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs). Particularly in an era shaped by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, Pub. L. 111-148), institutions have found it useful to invest in creating outdoor community spaces such as farmers’ markets, community gardens, and farms that promote preventive health. We (the authors) have used three such outdoor green spaces on our Penn State Hershey hospital campus to facilitate occupational practice at an eating disorders clinic, including forest bathing in the woods, shopping at an outdoor hospital farmers’ market, and harvesting produce from the hospital community garden as therapeutic programming for clients living with eating disorders.