Lydia Miller

In Ecoliteracy Students Collaborating in Health-Orientated Outdoor Learning (SCHOOL) students step into unique leadership roles and projects. As the Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator, I wanted to create a project revolving around the relevant mental health issue of chronic stress. I noticed early on in interactions with other students that stress was extremely prevalent and damaging to the students’ mental health and so I wanted to equip other students in Ecoliteracy SCHOOL with tools connecting them to nature and bettering their mental health. I researched the connection between nature, art, and wellbeing to create a “Nature Prescription (Rx)” filled with small, manageable and accessible activities students could utilize to better their mental health. I created a sample activity of observing nature and completing a continuous line drawing along with surveys to collect data on mood, stress, and heart rate before and after participating in the activity.In conducting my experiment, I found that observing nature for 5-10 minutes while completing a continuous line drawing of what was seen generally lowered reported stress, increased mood, and lowered heart rate. This could indicate that small-scale nature and art exposure activities could be beneficial for busy students to accessibly fit into their schedules to maintain mental wellbeing. High stress risk populations such as high school and college students struggle to maintain their mental health and wellbeing, but implementing low time commitment nature and art-based activities could be a step in helping these populations better their mental health and avoid chronic stress health implications.