Forest therapy program reduces academic and job-seeking stress among college students

Background and objective: Recreation or activities in forest are regarded as therapy. Many forest therapy programs have been developed and assessed in the domestic. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of the forest therapy program on academic and job-seeking stress in college students. Methods: Thirty five subjects were selected as the experimental group and 25 as the control group, and 29 subjects in the experimental group and 11 in the control group participated in the follow-up test to verify the persistence of stress reduction effects. The forest therapy program was carried out once a week for 2 hours each from September 4 to December 4, 2018, adding up to total eight sessions. Results: The experimental group showed statistically significant reduction in both academic stress and job-seeking stress, whereas the control group did not. For the persistence of the forest therapy program, the experimental group did not show a statistically significant difference between the posttest and the follow-up test, and thus the stress reduction effect was maintained. Conclusion: This study proved the reduction of academic and job-seeking stress in forest therapy programs and the persistence of the stress reduction effect of the forest therapy program. The result is consistent with the Stress Recovery Theory (SRT) that shows the stress reduction effect of nature. In addition, it has significance in that it has verified that the program using the forest on campus can reduce stress of most college students.