Dr. Carole Myers
Welcome to Health Connections, the show about people, health, and policy. I'm Dr. Carole Myers. Can recreational therapy help to address modern health challenges, including inactivity, declining social connections, too much screen time, and mental health problems? Dr. Derrick Stowell of the University of Tennessee Department of Kinesiology is here to help explore this question with me. Welcome to Health Connections, Dr. Stowell.
Dr. Derrick Stowell
Thank you for having me.
Please describe to us what is recreational therapy.
Recreational therapy is not all fun and games. It's a healthcare profession that we utilize assessment, and we develop use recreation to help improve the health and wellness outcomes of individuals that have illness, disabilities, or other circumstances. So, we try to help them identify goals and use recreation as a tool to help them make progress on their treatment.
Could you tell me, just to make sure I'm clear, what is recreation? What does that entail?
So, recreation, it is really - I consider it a vital component of anyone's healthy lifestyle, and I really love the definition from the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association. It's a really great definition, and they say recreation is the experience that results from freely chosen participation in physical, social, intellectual, creative, and spiritual pursuits that helps enhance an individual and community well-being.
What are the benefits of recreational therapy?
We find in research that recreational therapy has several benefits. One of the easiest ones to kind of identify is the whole idea of physical benefits, right? So, we're getting up, we're moving, we're off the couch, we're doing things, and by doing those physical activities, it helps also impact our mental health, it helps us improve our mood, helps us reduce stress, helps build satisfaction. And then, finally, one of the other components that I notice a lot in the research, and in almost any research study I've seen with recreational therapy, is this concept that they talk about as social connection. It provides a way for us to connect with other people.
How does someone access a recreational therapist, and how do they work with them?
So, in Knoxville, we actually have a lot of recreational therapists. Some examples, the University of Tennessee has camp programs that we offer for people with disabilities. So, we have program in the spring called Camp Koinonia, and that's a program that serves children with disabilities, where our college students take a class, learn how to develop and implement this program, and they run a camp. We also have a similar camp for older adults, so those individuals over 21 with a disability, and that's in every fall. So, again, students from our recreational therapy program learn how to help implement that. There's other programs out there too in the community. One really great one is the City of Knoxville has a dynamic recreation program, and they have adaptive sports and recreation opportunities for anybody in the Knoxville area to take part in,
And then we have some just community-based agencies that are generally specialty-oriented, like Sertoma Center and others that offer recreational therapy. Correct?
Absolutely. So, Sertoma Center has services and recreational therapists on staff to work with their residents and clients. The Knoxville Center for Autism is also another one, and then a program out in Lenoir City called STAR, which is a riding horseback riding program that has recreational therapists on staff.
This is Dr. Carole Myers joined today by Dr. Derrick Stowell from the University of Tennessee Department of Kinesiology. Thank you for listening to Health Connections. All past episodes are available at WUOT.org for on demand listening, and listeners, your comments and suggestions are always welcome.
