Research Trends on the Effects of Forest Therapy in Korea and Ways to Improve the Level of Medical Evidence: A Scoping Review

Research Trends on the Effects of Forest Therapy in Korea and Ways to Improve the Level of Medical Evidence: A Scoping Review

Background and objective: Studies on the effects of forest therapy are clinical research that reveals the effects suitable forthe purpose of therapy by applying a forest therapy program, which is a complex intervention, to humans in various forestenvironments. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to find out the characteristics of existing studies on the effects offorest therapy and to suggest ways to improve the level of evidence for future research results. In this study, a scopingreview was conducted to find out how studies on the effects of forest therapy were conducted based on the medical clinicalresearch method in domestic studies on the effects of forest therapy. Methods: The scoping review utilized a procedure proposed by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). A total of 564 studies weresearched and 57 were used in the final analysis. Results: As a result of the analysis, only 1 study (1.8%) had a manual to reproduce the forest therapy program, and 56studies (98.2%) reported only brief information on the program. As for the report on forest therapy environments, therewere articles that mentioned some therapy environments, but none predicted the effects or reported about reproducibility. Among the reports on forest therapy environments, 21.1% reported about both forest and thermal environments, and26.3% reported only about the forest environment. Conclusion: From the perspective of clinical research, the level of evidence for studies on the effects of forest therapy sofar has been found to be very low, and methods for applying clinical research methods to improve this have been discussed. Clinical research is a prerequisite for verifying medical effects in order to raise the level of forest therapy from wellness totreatment support activities, and it must be actively utilized in the future.