Adventurous Physical Activity Environments: A Mainstream Intervention for Mental Health

Abstract

Adventurous physical activity has traditionally been considered the pastime of a small minority of people with deviant personalities or characteristics that compel them to voluntarily take great risks purely for the sake of thrills and excitement. An unintended consequence of these traditional narratives is the relative absence of adventure activities in mainstream health and well-being discourses and in large-scale governmental health initiatives. However, recent research has demonstrated that even the most extreme adventurous physical activities are linked to enhanced psychological health and well-being outcomes. These benefits go beyond traditional 'character building' concepts and emphasize more positive frameworks that rely on the development of effective environmental design. Based on emerging research, this paper demonstrates why adventurous physical activity should be considered a mainstream intervention for positive mental health. Furthermore, the authors argue that understanding how to design environments that effectively encourage appropriate adventure should be considered a serious addition to mainstream health and well-being discourse.3

Understanding Action and Adventure Sports Participation—An Ecological Dynamics Perspective

“…To exemplify, classic theoretical approaches proposed to explain behavior in AAS include sensation seeking [11, 12], edgework [13, 14], type ‘T’ personality [4] and psychoanalysis [15]. The main narrative of these approaches is that personality traits and socialization processes predispose individuals to participate in risky or life-threatening activities [16]. …”

“…Most theoretical explanations assume that participation reflects a desire for thrills, excitement or adrenaline-seeking. However, emerging research indicates that these explanations are an oversimplification [18, 20, 21] and do not reflect the lived experience of participants who refute the thrills and adrenaline notion and instead describe AAS participation as meaningful and life-enhancing [16, 18, 19]. In recent years, a growing body of literature supports the idea that participation can promote psychological and physical well-being and health [18, 21–24] in a variety of ways.…”

Incidents and Injuries in Foot-Launched Flying Extreme Sports

“…individuals were taking up some sort of extreme sport 25 and these trends seem to be continuing 6,24,27 . As participation rates in extreme sports increase, it is likely that related incidents and injuries will also increase.…”

Response to “Nature fix: Addiction to outdoor activities”

“…Indeed, the reported benefits are multiple and varied (Kerr & Mackenzie, 2012). Clough, Mackenzie, Mallabon, and Brymer (2016) proposed six rewarding aspects of adventure sports engagement: (1) increased positive emotions, resilience, and self-efficacy; (2) overcoming challenge and achieving optimal experiences; (3) the fulfillment of basic psychological needs, such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness; (4) a connection to nature; (5) increased physical activity; and (6) the experience of intense emotions. Still, the psychological and neurobiological rewards associated with engagement in these sports are not yet fully understood; thus, further research is warranted on the experiences associated with extreme sports, including rush, in order to understand why they can become the focus of an addiction.…”

“…As Buckley states, exposure to nature has been linked to a number of positives outcomes, including improvements in cognitive function (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008) and increased overall physical and psychological well-being (Maller, Townsend, Pryor, Brown, & St Leger, 2006). Recently, adventure sports have been specifically proposed as a form of mental health intervention due to the psychologically rewarding experiences gained, coupled with the opportunity to spend time in natural settings (Clough et al., 2016). Thus, as Buckley suggests, continuing research on the combined effects of adventure sports and nature exposure may be a valuable avenue to pursue.…”