Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Recreation-based health and wellness programs for military service members are currently a topic of significant interest in the recreation and health industries. This study examined the health outcomes associated with participation in Project Sanctuary, a week-long recreation-based health and wellness family retreat for injured military service members. Linear mixed modeling was used to examine changes in health outcomes over four time points, and considered multiple covariates. One-hundred twenty-seven service members participated. Statistically significant reductions in total scores for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (PCL) measures were found, as well as notable improvements in Depression, Anxiety, and Atress Scale (DASS) and mental health functioning immediately following the intervention. No changes were found in physical health functioning. Trends demonstrated that participants maintained the positive psychological health changes over the three and six month time points. Veteran's Administration (VA) disability rate was the only significant covariate associated with health outcome change across timepoints. Implications for future practice and research are discussed in the article.
Department
Recreation Management and Policy
Publication Date
3-2-2018
Journal Title
Cogent Psychology
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Townsend, J., Hawkins, B., Bennett, J., Hoffman, J., Martin, T., Sotherden, E., & Bridges, W. (2018). Preliminary long-term health outcomes associated with recreation-based health and wellness programs for injured service members. Cogent Psychology, 5(1), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/23311908.2018.1444330
Rights
© 2018 The Author(s).
Comments
This is an open access article published by Taylor & Francis in Cogent Psychology in 2018, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2018.1444330