Positive Effects on Emotional Stress and Sleep Quality of Forest Healing Program for Exhausted Medical Workers during the COVID-19 Outbreak.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
; 19(5)2022 Mar 07.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1732041
ABSTRACT
This study targeted medical workers, who are currently being subjected to an excessive workload and emotional stress during the COVID-19 outbreak. Various treatment programs, such as a relaxation program to relieve stress, a walk in the forest, and woodworking were provided to the participants as forest healing therapies. We enrolled 13 medical workers (11 females, 2 males). Before and after forest healing therapy, stress and sleep-related questionnaires and levels of salivary cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S), and melatonin were measured and compared. The improvement of the perceived stress scale and the decrease of DHEA-S, a stress index, showed statistically significant results. However, although this study was conducted with a small number of participants and has a limitation in that the therapy occurred over a short period of only 1 night and 2 days, the trend of supporting results remains positive. As such, the authors propose forest healing therapy as one intervention to relieve the job stress for this group of workers.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Psychological Distress
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Qualitative research
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
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