Pocket-Sized Strategies: Nature Activities For Mental Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

Stress and anxiety are well-known struggles for university students, and professional associations like the American Association of Geographers (AAG) have developed recommendations to address mental health. This commentary outlines interventions for accessing nature’s healing benefits through location-based mobile app technology, such as iNaturalist, podcasts, and videos. This “pocket-sized” easy-access model can be utilized by geography and teacher education faculty, as well as undergraduate students.

Keywords:

• Citizen science
• mental health
• nature education
• experiential learning
• undergraduates

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the anonymous peer-reviewers and editor for the comments and suggestions, which helped to strengthen the manuscript. Also, thank you to my students: I am continuously in awe of your insights and perseverance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Each of the four sections had its own iNaturalist Project. An Umbrella Project was also created to track data among the four class sections. In iNaturalist, Umbrella Projects collate, compare, or promote a set of existing projects.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kimi Waite

Kimi Waite is an Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.