The Field Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Forest Therapy On Physical And Mental Healing For Women With Fatigue Symptoms

The natural environment as a restorative environment is able to let people recover their physical and mental health and their abilities.Objective:To explore the psychosomatic effects of Forest Therapy on women with fatigue symptoms.Methods:Using the method of field experiment and qualitative research,the experiment with 12 women was divided into pre experiment and formal experiment.The formal experiment used the random allocation based in Beijing city urban area and Songshan forest Park,collecting physiological indexes such as blood pressure,salivary cortisol and psychological indexes such as mood,stress,fatigue,environmental restoration and perception,while collecting experimental site temperature and humidity,noise,air quality and other environmental physical indexes.Results:(1)Forest Therapy can regulate the blood pressure of women with fatigue symptoms,and make the blood pressure tend to an ideal blood pressure;(2)Forest Therapy can improve the salivary cortisol concentration for women with fatigue symptom,which can adjust the circadian rhythm of salivary cortisol for women with fatigue symptoms.(3)Forest Therapy can effectively reduce the negative emotion for women with fatigue symptoms while improve their positive emotion such as gaining more energy;(4)Forest Therapy can effectively improve other factors for women with fatigue symptoms such as their physical fatigue,mental fatigue,the consequences of fatigue,the influence of fatigue for their sleep and fatigue situation;(5)Women with fatigue symptoms are able to reduce their stress and ease their tension in the forest environment compared with the city environment.(6)The restoration in forest environment was significantly higher than that in city environment.The subjective perception is more positive in forest environment.The interview results validate the physiological and psychological measurement results.The activities in Forest Therapy for participants make them more positive,more focused,more vitality,which can not only obviously relieve their fatigue,but also can make them think their living conditions.The positive effects of the forest environment also evoke their early and wonderful natural experience and their willingness to return to visit again.While the participants in Beijing city urban reported more negative emotions,more distracted,more tired.After the participation,the participants in Beijing city urban did not alleviate their fatigue but hope to change an environment or even escape the existing environment.This study is a field study on the result of physical and psychology healing for women with fatigue symptom in forest environment for the first time.Future research can enrich the sample groups and the evaluation index and expanding the activities in Forest Therapy.