Interview at SHIFT Jackson Hole

This series of questions was asked of Dr. Tidball,  a member of a panel dealing with the topic of Nature as a Social Determinant of Health - Applications and Implications for Active Duty Service members at SHIFT 2019.

• From your perspective, what is the Department of Defense’s interest in Nature Rx as a function of readiness?

First, there are 11.4 million acres owned by DoD - this can be thought of as a giant “pharmacy” at their disposal. Secondly, Total Force Fitness acknowledges environment as a factor, but in a somewhat negative way - positive, asset-based approaches are needed, and can be documented, towards servicemember effectiveness and lethality. the same is true for Military Families.

How could outdoor recreation provide social support structures for active duty service members and their families? How could it contribute to family readiness? 

There is a DoD funded program that deals with this question, called the Military Families Learning Network. Within it are a number of concentration areas, one of which I am the director or PI. Its called Community Capacity Building and for 5 or so years we have been working on this question. There are many webinars, blog posts and other resources there. In particular, there is a community capacity inventory and a community capacity building training series. In those, there is explicit acknowledgement of the outdoor setting, and importantly, being IN IT - recreating, meditating, eating - as a component of community capacity, which is the indicator of robust social support structures for service members and their families.

• What mechanisms drive the therapeutic outcomes of intentional outdoor-based programs for military service members and their families?

            There are a number of them - 

• How can outdoor Rx contribute to suicide aversion?

 Suicide comes from places of hopelessness and despair. Nature-based therapies and antithetical to hopelessness and despair. Observe the struggle of even the lowly ant. No ability to relinquish the desire to be alive, to stay alive. Even when doom is near. For the ant, life persists, demands to continue. EO Wilson and Stephen Kellert worked with me to refine Biophilia thinking, the affinity we humans have to other life, to LIVING.  Urgent Biophilia is this force that must be tapped into. Urgent Biophilia is a complex system of values, motivations and behaviors that give rise to life affirming actions, that lift us from hopelessness and despair, on the wings of other life.

• Can you talk about citizen science, and its place in this nature-based exercise work? 

In my work, citizen science is a great “rally point” - it provides tight focus on task and purpose, but does so in a redemptive rather than destructive way. As an Infantry guy, the mission, the job description is “close with and kill the enemy.” But balance is needed. Can those skills and talents, those mindsets be brought to bear for LIFE? Citizen science opportunities for veterans and service members provide evidence that they can. This is therapeutic.

• Can you talk about the importance of breaking down this work into its pieces (e.g., social aspect—solitary or group; exact environment—forested vs. water; type of activity; exercise duration and intensity)? 

I think of it as a three-legged stool. First, the importance of group work, at least initially, cannot be overstated. The “small unit camaraderie” analogs and the host of shared experience interaction types are bedrock “pieces” if you will, a leg of the stool.

A second leg is setting. Water lends a certain kind of context, but so do forests, mountains, deserts, etc. The key is awe, and the potential to re-frame the self in a living system. This is also critical.

The third leg is Task & Purpose (achievement helps, but isn’t critical). To feel meaningfully engaged, up to the task, prepared, essential to mission - these are all baked in to the soldier, sailor, airmen or marine. 

Later, after multiple evolutions, participants who have regained or restored an identity as a “competent operator”, they move into more solitary modes ,improving upon mastery, but still relying on the communal base of their fellows.  The penultimate evolution is mastery of the outdoor recreation type - but the ultimate evolution is actualization, of the transfiguration of recreation into conservation, when the two become indistinguishable. We no longer see legs and a seat, we see a stool. 

• Are there special considerations for active duty or vets? If they are different, how?

I really don’t know. I think the theories I have laid out hold, but certainly there are unique considerations. The edge cannot be lost for warriors, and they are not yet suffering the dislocation of being removed from the “small unit cohesion” dynamic and the Task and purpose dynamic. I want to get into this area further.