Nature Therapy

My second, creative artifact is nature therapy. Because there is no one representation of nature therapy, I have chosen this picture of a garden, because I believe that many people would have access to gardens of some sort, most likely in a public park. Nature therapy is based on the principle that humans have agrarian minds and that nature fascinates us. Our modern Western society over stimulates the brain and gives us attention fatigue constant stimulation, resulting in various mental and physical ailments. Nature therapy proposes that people spend more time in nature to enjoy and cultivate our inherent interest and need to be in nature. Nature therapy combats attention fatigue by fascinating the senses.

Nature therapy is done through exposure to green settings, and increasing one's time in around nature. The slightest changes in one's environment, such as a view of a green area, or a few more minutes outside everyday, can be beneficial to patients of nature therapy. There is something inherently healthy in nature, that our bodies react to which makes this process restorative and beneficial to our bodies and minds. I know that my own experience with nature has always been very therapeutic and restorative.

In my paper I focus on the implementation of Nature therapy instead of psychostimulants, such as Adderall to control and reverse the effects of attention fatigue on children with ADHD. Medications are not the best means of treatment for children with ADHD, and something as simple and natural as Nature therapy can make a world of difference in lessening their ADHD symptoms.

Last Child in the Woods

"Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder" by Richard Louv. I came across this book while looking through the website for the Children and Nature Network. Louv is a chairman of the Children and Nature Network. This book is about the effect of nature, and the consequences of absence in children today. The book focuses on humanity's relationship to nature and how the world we currently live in may actually be causing some of our psychological difficulties because it separates us from nature, and over loads us with stimuli. Discussing the effect of nature therapy, green classrooms and a general increase of green surroundings in everyday life, the book centers up on how reconnecting with nature can improve our lives.

As a stark contrast to the medicinal treatments for ADHD this approach encourages something as simple as spending more time in nature to heal psychological difficulties. I have always enjoyed nature, and to think that it could actually be good for me makes me really happy. Although this source is not scholarly, its content is supported by scholarly resources. The author is not a scholar, but an author and journalist, and the book is not backed by any scholarly organization. From what I have read of the book, I have enjoyed it immensely and it makes me question other primarily psychostimulant treatments for psychological disorders. It makes sense that nature would have restorative qualities because this is our habitat, and to remove creatures from their natural habitats should have some sort of impact on them. I hope to use this book to stimulate my own thinking and challenge by own views regarding treatment.

Helping One Another Out Is Natural

I came across this article today, and it really hit the spot. The article is entitled, "We May Be Born With an Urge to Help"by Nicholas Wade of the New York Times. This article maintains that the need to help other human beings is naturally ingrained into who we are. Being helpful and watching out for one another is just a part of human character. This article in the New York Times, or rather on their web page where I found it, cited the "innately sociable and helpful qualities exhibited by babies" as a basis for this reasoning. Furthermore, the behavior seems to innate because it appears so early in a child's development. So early, in fact, that the child is not yet at the stage of life where parents begin to correct and alter their childrens behavior to be polite and meet societal standards. It is interesting though as the article continues that at age 3 children begin to be more selective in their sharing or personal items. This implies that sharing and helping are natural tendencies, but that the "nurture" aspect which come from the surrounding environment actually curtails this to be less open and helpful.

I believe that this article is so incredibly interesting as it discusses not only psychological issues, but anthropological issues also. Anthropology is one of my favorite subjects. This article even relates back to my cultural artifacts, Ritalin and Adderal, because it purposes that qualities that were once thought to be purely attributed to personality, may actually be ingrained for a purpose. Perhaps, qualities in an individual's personality are present because they are addaptive, and biological rather than just psychological. This article suggests that these attributes that were once thought to be just "part of a person's personality" may actually be naturally wired into us. This article also questions the interplay between nature and nurture, promoting the idea that children are ingrained with the skills of being helpful and sociable, but as they grow older and become more enmeshed and experienced in the world around them, that this "nurtures", or rather alters, their natural personalities. To relate this back to my topic, this could suppose that although children with ADHD are wired differently, there is nothing to say that the proper environment and non-medication oriented treatment couldn't change their behavior for the better. This is a bit of a stretch, but it is one interesting inference that I have made.

Here is the link to the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?em

"ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement" (Hoshaw 1). This garbage path inhibits the Pacific Ocean and has been doubling in size every year, it is now approximately twice the size of Texas. As sad and disgusting as this picture is to me, what is even more devastating is that it is one of five that inhabit the world's oceans. The mass is made up of some fishing gear, but the vast majority of the waste comes from garbage that comes from land objects that are washed out to sea by storm drains. Plastic makes up most of the pile and is also the major contributing factor for why this pile destroys the environment around it.

I never really thought about what the long-term effect of not picking up all of those cigarette butts, fastfood wrappers, fliers, and cans. I also never, in my wildest dreams imagined that we could hurt our own world so much, and really have no good reason for the damage. Are people that lazy that by not picking up trash or haphazardly discarding it along a roadside, we have actually built a memorial to our ecological stupidity without even knowing it?

The fact that humans are actually destroying portions of the world that we can not physically live upon is mind-boggling to me. We are actually destroying patches of water in the ocean. This sounds naive, but I never really considered water pollution beyond oil or waste dumping. I never pictured it, quite literally, as the accumulation of a state-sized eye-sore in the middle of the ocean.

What is even more disturbing to me is that somehow I had always associated plastic materials with being okay to use, because they can be recycled. But I guess I am not being very realistic about that, since I know that many plastic materials can not be recycled. In Europe, everything can be recycled, from glass, to paper, to any sort of plastic. Recycling is a cultural stigma that everyone knows they must abide by. I wish that Americans had a better recycling system, or that we made everything out of completely recyclable materials.

Here is a link to the article from the New York Times
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10patch.html?_r=1

AMPHETAMINE/DEXTROAMPHETAMINE - ORAL a.k.a. Adderall

My next possible cultural artifact makes up the blue portion of the flag in the picture at the left. This blue tablet is used to treat ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and its trade name is Adderall. This drug has a more potent dosage of amphetamines and dexoamphetamines than the well known ADHD drug Ritalin. Taken orally, the drug is used to to increase the ability to pay attention, stay focused, and control behaviorial problems. This artifact "corrects" the natural behavioral patterns exhibited by persons diagnosed with ADHD. Introduced in 1996 by Shire Pharmaceuticals the original version of Adderall was known as Obetral and used for weight management.

During the 1990s the interest and alarm over children with ADHD and how they were medicated became a very public issue. This drug implies that the hyperactive behaviors of children and adults need to be corrected. I didn't know that hyperactivity and alertness were maladaptive qualities. Evolutionarily speaking, wouldn't these be advantagous rather than maladaptive behavioral patterns? This medicine implies that children and adults who can not sit still, and listen for hours are unnatural. In the wild, if a person were to sit quietly for hours, wouldn't this listlissness inhibit the ability of any creature to survive? Humans have not survived for thousands of years because of drugs like Adderall that make the user docile, in fact eccentric energy seems to be more adaptive than maladaptive. I mean that many great minds through out time have thrived through their ability to be themselves, even though they were not the quiet, attentive students. Examples: Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent Van Gogh. (I will probably need better examples, and need to work on my logic, but I guess I am trying to say that these people broke the mold, and this was good) Everyone works in their own way, so maybe the educational system needs to meet their needs, rather than curtailing them.

Antipsychotic Drugs

This is the atypical anti-psychotic drug known as Clozaril. It was introduced in the 1990 as a prescription drug therapy for the treatment of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental illness consisting of a total loss of contact with reality due to persistent delusions and hallucinations, that last for a period longer than six months. This drug is highly effective in the treatment of positive, or type I symptoms of schizophrenia. The drawback to this drug is that it lowers a patient's white blood cell count.

Below is a link to a 2000 20/20 special about Schizophrenia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moP_e-gx5hk

I have been volunteering at a Community Alliance resident center, where about forty percent of the inhabitants have Schizophrenia along with other mood disorders. I am also a psychology major and I believe that antipsychotic drugs are the best means of treatment for people with schizophrenia. This man-made tool corrects many of the abnormalities and dysfunctions shown in a patient with schizophrenia and allows for the patient to become whole again.

Clorazil is a man-made drug that was created to control the natural biological and psychological suffering caused by schizophrenia. This drug corrects the overabundance of dopamine that appears to be responsible for causing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a natural disorder that has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and this drug represents man kind's ability to better understand and treat psychological conditions through a scientific process.

Kaneko Library

I thought this library was awesome, it was really soothing and stimulated a lot of ideas. I was almost overwhelmed with all of the creative energy that surrounded me. One particular book that caught my eye was a book entitled, The Descent of Woman: The Classic Study of Evolution by Elaine Morgan. The book was published in 1972 caused considerable controversy. I am a bit of a feminist and have a great interest in anthropology. This book examined the various male-centered biases found in the study of evolution. I would have really liked to use this book in my essay, but I could not, for the life of me, think of what other object I could use to relate to it. Looking back, I think that this task would not have been as difficult as it first seemed. The book is all about the impact of women on evolution, and well, that basically lays the foundation for humanity's relationship to nature, and vise versa. This would have been my textual artifact.

I enjoy the fact that this book challenges the predominant view of evolution, in that it gives more power to women. Throughout much of the research on evolution the role of man has been prominent, while the impact of women has been ignored or even neglected to be mentioned. The book, in hindsight, could have been a very lucrative cultural artifact, enabling me to touch upon and investigate a wide range of materials about woman's relationship to nature. I think this would have been made my paper/thesis more defined in that it would open me up to looking at humanity's relationship to nature through one perspective, the female one.

Also I liked the layout of the library. It was open, but I did not feel distracted. Even though, I have to admit that my eye frequently wandered to the three plasma screens which showcased a clay-mation film about people eating all of the objects in the room, until they ended up eating one another, and another which was some sort of stop-animation, I am guessing, (even though it looked like intricate black silhouette cut outs of the characters) that was the story of a genie, told in German with English subtitles. The German was what inticed me, but the animation was what mesmerized me into watching for several minutes. The library was sort of an oxymorn, in that it was equally tranquil yet, stimulating.