Abstract

Dominant models of health view people as essentially separable from their environment, affected directly by specific physical events or indirectly through idiosyncratic perceptions. Health is therefore a function of the individual, whether they are treated alone or in a group of similar individuals. A different (ecopsychological) view is that we are embedded within the environment; that notions of self, illness and wellbeing relate to where we are. Health practitioners and policy makes have realised that mind and body cannot be seen as being separate when promoting wellbeing, but “self” and “environment” is an equally false dichotomy. Although rarely acknowledged, we are continually interconnected via two-way physical interactions (electromagnetic, chemical and mechanical), and all we can know of the world comes via such interactions. Our concepts of self and other, health and disease, and all the relationships between them, are based on such interactions. If our environment changes, then these interactions change, yet our concepts often remain rigidly fixed. By introducing research into restorative, natural environments, the notion of adaptive mental states and the practises of ecotherapy, this article offers an alternative view of wellbeing: shifting the emphasis away from the individual and their illness and instead inviting consideration of the more dynamic relationships between people and place.