Manuel Soulard led a dozen people up a narrow forest trail, pausing to extend a hand to a heavy-set woman struggling a little, then stopping in a clearing.

“What do you hear?” he asked.

“The crunch of leaves,” someone said. “The wind in the trees,” said another.

Dr. Soulard nodded encouragingly. “Do you notice how quickly the sounds of the city traffic fade away?”

 

 

Shortly after beginning his six-month rotation on the Montreal General’s inpatient ward last July, Soulard and a fellow second-year psychiatric resident, Fiodor Poukhovski-Sheremetyev, started taking a small group of patients on these weekly walks on Mount Royal – an introduction to “forest bathing.”

“The idea that there is something therapeutic and healing about being out in a natural space, either alone or with other people, probably goes back to the dawn of human civilization,” said Dr. Poukhovski-Sheremetyev. In Japan, the concept is known as shinrin-yoku, and doctors there often prescribe a forest walk as a relief for chronic stress. Many studies have shown that time spent outdoors in nature can lower one’s stress level and heart rate, increase well-being and nourish creativity.

Poukhovski-Sheremetyev, who has been interested in the relationship between people and their physical space since he was an undergrad sociology student in Edmonton, and Soulard, who grew up exploring the forest in his hometown of Gatineau, knew this. However, when they combed through the research to find out how to apply the concepts of forest-bathing to the treatment of acutely ill psychiatric inpatients, to their astonishment, they couldn’t find any studies at all.

Still, they wanted to try it. They had arrived on the ward in July 2024 to find listless patients with time on their hands, the shortage of activities made worse by the after-effects of COVID-19, when many occupational therapy programs had been abandoned.

“What the pandemic did across the board, not just in psychiatry, is it kind of stopped these programs in their tracks,” said Poukhovski-Sheremetyev. Relaunching them two or three years later proved difficult. “The clinicians who had started them weren’t there anymore, or the energy to do things wasn’t there anymore.”

Casting about for new ways to engage their patients, they looked out the ward’s grubby windows and found their answer. Montreal’s emerald gem, Mount Royal Park, was right across the street.

For close to six months, the psychiatrists-in-training, with volunteers including nurses, orderlies and clinicians, led a group of five to 10 patients who were interested and stable on a forest walk every Friday. The walk incorporated deep breathing and meditation and a discussion of group dynamics that boiled down to, “Be cool.” The patients loved it. Until the forest walks, the privilege of leaving the ward had meant going outside for a smoke break or perhaps to the closest dépanneur to buy a bag of chips.

Some patients joined the walk only once or twice, while others lined up to come week after week and encouraged other patients to join in. Equally rewarding for Poukhovski-Sheremetyev and Soulard was the feedback from orderlies (préposés aux bénéficiaires, or PABs), nurses and clinicians that the mood on the entire ward was shifting.

“PABs were mentioning to us that it was getting a little easier to build rapport with patients, that they were seeing better dynamics on the ward, both between themselves and with patients among themselves,” Poukhovski-Sheremetyev said.

He and Soulard have finished their stint on the inpatient ward, but they are eager to restart their forest walks and study them in a systematic way. Soulard said they want to gather the evidence to show that incorporating these walks as a therapeutic intervention into the treatment of acutely ill psychiatric patients is something that can – and should – happen in hospitals across Quebec and beyond. In June, they presented their experience to psychiatrists at a provincial conference in Gatineau. But it was no typical PowerPoint presentation. They took their colleagues on a forest walk, to discover its benefits for themselves.

Loreen Pindera is an AMI-Quebec board member, a member of AMI’s Mind & Body committee, and an occasional volunteer in the forest-walk program at the Montreal General Hospital.

From Share&Care Summer 2025