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New and Featured Clinical Education Products - April 2022
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New Resource to Help Veterans Engage in Positive and Healthy Nature-Based Activities
About The Great Outdoors: Engaging with Nature for Mental Health
To celebrate Earth Day, the SC MIRECC has new materials to support Veterans by helping them engage in positive and healthy nature-based activities. The materials integrate the science of the benefits of engaging with nature, with the well-established approaches of behavioral activation, mindfulness, and other positive psychology exercises. The clinician manual supports the delivery of a very brief (1-2 session) or brief (3-5) session intervention in a variety of settings. The Veteran guide can be used as part of a clinician-delivered intervention, or as a self-help intervention. The material:
- Provides an overview of the science on the benefits of nature engagement and greenspace exposure.
- Includes an activity to review one's past and current engagement in nature.
- Integrates principles of motivational interviewing to resolve ambivalence.
- Encourages value identification/prioritization and discovering nature-based activities that can support living out those values.
- Uses goal setting, activity scheduling, and behavior monitoring to help Veterans increase their nature engagement.
- Provides links to guided audio exercises, including 5 mindfulness exercises, 1 savoring exercise, and 2 guided imagery exercises.
- Published 2022
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About Us
The mission of the South Central MIRECC is to promote equity in engagement, access, and quality of mental health care for Veterans facing barriers to care, especially rural Veterans. The South Central MIRECC strives to promote and celebrate a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion among our staff, across our sites, and in the work we do to improve mental health care for rural and other underserved Veterans. New and featured clinical education product updates are produced by the SC MIRECC Education Core. Email us at VISN16SCMIRECCEducation@va.gov. Visit us at https://www.mirecc.va.gov/VISN16/index.asp.
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