The Feasibility and Impact of Practising Online Forest Bathing to Improve Anxiety, Rumination, Social Connection and Long-COVID Symptoms: 2022 McEwan

Well, quite. I miss woodland walks, but am as unenthused by online forest bathing as a bear would be if offered online forest defecation.

 

precisely

 

Decided to check how likely this is to be mostly an infomercial and the list of authors suggests: ayup.

1 College of Health, Psychology and Social Care, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby DE22 1GB, UK
2 Kindred Soil, Bristol BS6 5BP, UK
3 Woodlands Breathing, Edinburgh EH27 8BW, UK
4 Biomedical Research Theme, School of Human Sciences, University of Derby, Derby DE22 1GB, UK
5 Healthy Living for Pandemic Event Protection (HL–PIVOT) Network, Chicago, IL 60612, USA
6 Catholic University of Applied Sciences, Karlstr. 63, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
7 Faculty of Psychotherapy Science, Sigmund Freud University Vienna, 1020 Vienna, Austria
8 Well with Nature, Dronfield, Derbyshire S18 4AX, UK
9 Wild Edgewalker Forest Therapy, Jersey JE3 8AF, UK​

With some wishy-washy wellness project, of the same school of thought as "exercise is good for everyone": https://ahs.uic.edu/physical-therap...healthy-living-for-pandemic-event-protection/.

Really, the BPS ideology can be summed up as abusing the asymmetry of bullshit. It's too easy to produce and it could even be copy-pasted and no one would care, doesn't even matter that most of the "studies" add nothing, it's all quantity, and it's beloved.

 

Either that, or they're trying to sell packages to "forest experiences", which is a great way to monetise public open spaces at no actual cost to yourself.

 

With the growth of prescribed nonsense, this is a good new business model, for people who don't mind things like ethics. LP is leading the way on that: don't rely on market forces to feed your business, have the healthcare systems do it instead, they won't have a choice and you get so much business in return you start having to reject clients.

Although technically in that model, the patients are the product and the actual client is the healthcare system. Or maybe the sucker is more appropriate, but I don't know who is the bigger sucker: the patient who has to pay for pseudoscience even though we technically already pay for the science that isn't happening (so paying it twice over), or the physician who thinks nothing wrong of wasting resources like this or degrading the credibility of the entire profession.