Children’s Mental Health Week | Nature-based play therapy as a response to the negative impact of climate change on children’s mental health and well-being

Clare Carbis and Maggie Fearn are both Senior Lecturers on the MSc Play Therapy at University of South Wales (USW). The course is a professional training for students to become BAPT Play Therapists.  Play Therapy is effective due to the combined effects of the communicative and healing powers of play and the acceptance and containment embedded in the child’s relationship with the Play Therapist. The child leads the play and the Play Therapist follows, providing safety and containment, regulating and supporting the child’s self expression through the symbols and metaphors of play.

Nature-based play therapy

Maggie Fearn’s research explores nature-based play therapy practice, which extends the therapeutic powers of play beyond the play therapy room and into the natural environment.   She has developed nature-based play therapy training that can be used one-to-one with a child, with families, and with therapeutic nurture groups for children aged four to twelve years.

Her research establishes five fundamental principles for nature-based play therapy:

1. Establish and maintain primacy of therapeutic relationship between play therapist and child
2. Attention to ‘presence’ and support for body-mind both indoors and out
3. Indoor-outdoor connectedness – principles of confidentiality, safety and trust that transfer and flow seamlessly from indoors to outdoors
4. Provision of enclosed outdoor space
5. Careful, informed consideration of the affordances of ‘indoor-outdoor connectedness’ and ‘enclosed outdoor space’ that provide invitations for play

Maggie said: “Based on these principles, I developed a blended learning course and began training therapists in nature-based play therapy in 2020. This is now an annual 12-hour CPD course, approved by the British Association of Play Therapists (UK) and Association for Play Therapy (USA) that will have trained a total of 71 participants by April 2022. Online sessions contain demonstration and theory of best practice and participants then put learning into practice in experiential directed study tasks. Successful completion of the training leads to the CTC Certificate in Nature-Based Play Therapy.

“All child therapists, including play therapists and expressive arts therapists, can learn to safely extend their practice to include nature as ally in their therapeutic work with children and their families, accessing the therapeutic powers of play in nature for healing, and deepening connection with that which sustains us.”

Climate change

The world is facing a climate crisis. World temperatures are rising due to human activity which is impacting the worlds’ natural habitats, the animals living in these habitats and all aspects of human life. Children and young people are increasingly aware of the negative impact of climate change on both nature and humans, in particular the implications for their futures. Clinicians are observing growing numbers of children and young people whose mental health and well-being is negatively impacted by an awareness of the climate crisis. Eco-anxiety, ecological grief and eco-distress are terms used widely across the media and scholarly works to describe this response. However, research into how parents/carers, teachers, and therapists can best support children’s emotional response to the climate crisis is in its infancy.

Clare Carbis said: “In my research, I explore how play therapists can support children whose mental health and wellbeing is negatively impacted by an awareness of the climate crisis. It also highlights the important role significant adults such as parents/carers and teachers can have.

“Research suggests that collective action is a useful buffer to the anxiety caused by climate crisis awareness and advocates for the integration of nature connection in coping with environmental change.”

Clare proposes that nature-based play therapy is an appropriate intervention for children impacted by climate crisis awareness. 

“Parents, carers, and teachers have an invaluable role in support children in their understanding of the climate crisis and their processing of the emotive content”, she said.

“Current research encourages adults to be honest in their discussions around the climate crisis, to listen and amplify the child's voice and concerns and that parents/carers taking action can then empower those children. It is also important to make children aware of what is being done by others to reduce climate change.

“However, more research is needed to better understand both the impact of the climate crisis on children’s mental health and wellbeing and the most effective interventions of support.”

Advice for parents/carers:

• Children’s mental health and wellbeing can be negatively impacted by an awareness of the climate crisis.  It is important for parents/carers, teachers, mental health practitioners, and therapists to educate themselves around both the impact and the most effective ways of providing support for children processing this.
• Collective action is known to be a buffer to anxiety. Providing likeminded children with opportunity to collectively engage in nature-based projects that will reduce climate change is likely to be an effective intervention. 
• Both play and nature can be healing and therapeutic – we would encourage families to spend time together playing in and with nature. This could be child led play on a country walk or in a local park, or more structured with parents/carers providing a focus. Ideas of more structured nature-based play activities include: 
• Creating a nature touch box – a child is given an egg box and asked to fill each section with a natural item with a different texture.  Children are asked to describe how each object feels. This activity is both calming and regulatory.
• Growing seeds together – whether this is a patch of wildflower seeds in your garden, herbs on your windowsill or bigger projects such as planting trees together. Nurturing nature is therapeutic, with the added benefit of contributing positively to ecosystems.