# IP1- Reflective Research Journal
## Abstract
This study investigates the potential of the incorporation of ecotherapy into virtual reality. This time mental health is not seen as important, it feels like it is ignored in certain areas. A high percentage of people experience mental health issues, where certain individuals have problems accessing the help they need. This is where we test ecotherapy in virtual reality, and the benefits it can have, but also making it a lot easier to access.

Incorporating evidence from critical health evaluations, books and journals reflecting methods of support with mental health and communication with individuals who are willing to help understand their issues regarding mental health.

## Communication Journal
### Day 1- 14/10/2022
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*Figure 1*

Developing connections through MS Teams, a group chat was made with people of different skills and practice. This was to connect everyone to begin thinking about a potential collaborative project. Each individual was able to get an overview of other people, and their skills and get an idea if this potentially could benefit them towards a collaboration.

### Day 2- 16/10/2022
Conducting research with ceratin individuals from Games Art MA, we developed an online mind map to share ideas, discover our limitations, consider the demographic this project will consider etc. The individuals are listed on the [Mind Map Document](https://app.mural.co/t/mainterdisaplinarypractice19795/m/mainterdisaplinarypractice19795/1665751703051/b760425efcbd929b3800ca8afff8cf362d33888c?sender=uc3bd403533c71073c7450881).

### Day 3- 19/10/2022
Conducting a team meeting with participants that have made a firm decision in collaborating in a team for the project. The discussion that was conducted in this team meeting was to assess and see if more participants want to collaborate and also who want to leave and focus on their project. A discussion was made to do meetings every Wednesday, evaluated everyone's progress and see what needs to be done next. In conclusion, everyone was asked to focus on contributing to the mind map and adding ideas and producing some form of document which lists everyone's role and sections of their tasks. Another meeting will be conducted on 26/10/2022.

### Day 4- 26/10/2022
Due to certain miss communication issues, every participant that was in the mind map decided it would be best to share ideas on it, however, everyone will be free to do their practice of interest. Some have decided to work together on a certain idea but the main outcome was to see what everyone can develop from their own interests.

### Day 5- 15/11/2022
Decided to collaborate with a colleague who works on concept art, due to the time and specification of the project it was wise to find and collaborate with specific individuals. Set out a small brief of what was required from the concept artist with a deadline.

### Day 6- 18/11/2022
Had a meeting with a collegue on developing a natural environment that will correspond to both of our own personal thesiss, the choice was made due to the time schedule and decisions that a collaboration would help in achieiveing a quicker and more efficent environement it would also mean that it would limit the stress due to the time limit and the detail of the environment would be more visable. Further meetings will be conducted to list areas and elements that each of use will be working on.

## Research Journal
### Ecotherapy
Ecotherapy should be creating a closer connection with nature it allows a person to feel comfort allowing them to step away from stressful, harmful, depressing situations by using the natural environment around them such as a park, zoo, forest anything with a natural source it is also referred to as *"green care"*.

>**("comprises nature-based interventions in variety of natural settings")**
**("Ecotherapy initiatives usually consist of a facilitated, specific intervention, for a particular participant, rather than simply 'an experience in nature' for the general public")**
**("Although the area of ecotherapy is very diverse, the common linking ethos is the contact with nature in a facilitated, structured and safe way, where many vulnerable groups gain therapeutic benefits (Bragg *et al*.2013; Bragg and Atkins 2016)")** page 30 *McGeeney, A 2016, With Nature in Mind : The Ecotherapy Manual for Mental Health Professionals*

In 2009 the Big Lottery Fund supported an ecotherapy project by Mind's Ecominds. They funded 130 environmental projects to help and support people that live and experience mental health problems. This project focused on the improvement of confidence, and self-esteem but also physical and mental health. Over 12,000 people used Ecominds to help them with mental health after it ended in 2013.

The University of Essex researched the effectiveness of the Ecominds project, the evaluation focused on 3 main themes "Well-being, Social inclusion and Connection to nature". What were the key findings made by the University of Essex, "803 participants took part in the evaluation with 515 taking part in the all projects and 287 in the in-depth studies participants were mainly male (66-69 per cent)".

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The charts show statistics on this research experiment, "the majority of participants both their well-being and self-esteem scores showed a statistically significant increase from beginning to the end of their involvement with Ecominds". The statistics showed that an average participant had an increase in their well-being of 17% and self-esteem by 11% shown in Figure 2. Then the well-being was tested of the participants in the Ecominds project, at the beginning, the well-being was lower than that average person, however, ecotherapy had proven to work as 76% of participants experience an increase in their mood through one session. These participants also had a decrease in "mood disturbance, anger, confusion, depression and tension", shown in figure 3. Then the last research conducted through the ecominds project was social inclusion where participants had increased social engagement scores. There was an improvement of 10% on average, however, there were few that had an increase of 89%, shown in figure 4.

To conclude Ecotherapy can have a great impact on a person's mental health status. The improvements it can make to the well-being of one's health are suitale however an impact can be seen as the therapy progresses. All these statistics show this improvement and this was done through "green care", implying that a natural environment can assist in supporting people with, anxiety, depression, social well-being etc.

After reviewing the article on Ecominds by the University of Essex. Information was gathered on constructing a survey-based questionnaire to identify people's mental health and relation to their emotions and the areas/people they're close to. The survey questionnaire will then be conducted again after the final ecotherapy world will be constructed and tested; [Survey Link](https://forms.gle/VnYL8J94sSQpVr1W7).

Data was gathered from the constructed survey 27 responces were recived by certain idividuals who asked to not diss close their names and wanted it to be anonimous. What can be learned from the responces is that majority of the individuals taking it had a very simialr responce. Figure 5 and 6 show that 44.4% of indivituals are in the mid braket of feeling healthy and connected to the environment, however then in figure 7 only 40.7% of people were in the mid braket being connected to the digital world having the other 51.8% above this were they felt very connected to the digital world making it a 18.5% gap as only 33.3% were connected to the natural world. It shows that people in this day and age seem more connected to living a digital life than one invloving nature, people are more connected to their mobile phones than talking to people outside and physicaly meeting them. After looking at figure 7 I have noticed that it will be hard to fully assess individuals on levels of happiness after experiencing ecotherapy in VR as 44.4% of responces are happy and go above the mid range on the scale they were given on the survey. Then in figure 10 I have assessed their scale of importance to identify what is important to them. This assessment will help to identify what kind of aspects to involve in the VR ecotherapy environement but also parts to exclude. On average the majority of indivituals choise between 8 and 10 on the importance scale on each quiestion. This means that the ecotherapy environement can focus on all these three areas of importnace as all of them connect to each other the only issue is how to implament it to the final product as there is a lot of technicality around it. The responces stike a certain area of intrest it seems that a wide range of individuals have 2 aspects in common and it is to socialise or do some form of exercise or activity. these areas of intrest should potentialy be introduced to the environment in VR for a digital ecotherapy treatment, making it interactive should be an area to look into as it could increase the success rate of the treatment it can also help with social anxiety. Lastly figure 16 identifies different emotions this area of research will help underdstaning what kind of emotions should be focused on to help the individual with such as being sad, annoyed,, confused, lonely and etc. The focus of the environrment will be support in decreasng these negative emotions and developing more possitive feelings in the person. The idea will be for an individual to explore how they feel.
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More information can be gathered about ecotherapy as Martin Jordan and Joe Hinds speak about the theory, research and practice of ecotherapy. Ecotherapy is not just plants, trees or grass it involves everything related to nature Martin and Joe speak of how "Ecotherapy is not just about our relationship with the natural environment but also concerns our relationship with animals and their positive effect on our mental health".
There are two types of ecotherapy Levels 1 and 2. Level 1 therapy as Martin and Joe state is "often based on a traditional Western worldview that values humanity well above the rest of nature" were as level 2 "focuses on a Circle of Reciprocal Healing, a wider approach rooted in the ecologically based, whole systems understanding that there can be no true human health on a sick planet".

#### Season Selection
*Figure 17*

#### Research into Physical Environements
Through my studies on natural environemnt I have come across woodland parks that give a calming affect visual and decided to research these places a bit more. The are set in Wales the first one being [Craig Sychtyn](https://www.shropshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/nature-reserves/craig-sychtyn), second [Bwlytai Wood](https://www.shropshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/nature-reserves/bwlytai-wood) and lastly [Brook Vessons](https://www.shropshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/nature-reserves/brook-vessons) Brook Vessons , each one being very unique.

## Production Journel
Detailed production task list developed in [Trello](https://trello.com/b/XUDrTrob/ip1-project).

Concept art is constructed on an AI platform, it is a concept generated by AI, do to the inability of developing sketches and concepts, I have found this method of generating an overall idea of how the environment should look through AI-generated concepts.

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*Figure 18*
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#### Coding tree generator
To increase the efficency in building the environement quicker, a method to generate tree had to be looked into' as duplicating it and possitioning in different parts of the land would be time consuming. I have attempted to create a tree generator to generate trees in selected areas, looked into tutorials on developing an addon for Blender through python. After several hours of typing the code up I was unale to achieve the effect I wanted the addon had problems running were it displayed a Syntax error and several lines of the code didnt correspond to each other. Due to the time constraints for this project another way to form trees in selected areas had to be looked into. Figure 20 shows an attemted code for the tree generator.

*Figure 20*

A collegue assisted me into working on gemometry nodes, being it his speciality due to the techniqual crafts he focuses on I was able to gather information and an idea on creating a tree generator by using his techniques. The basic tree generator node creation is shown in figure 21.
*Figure 21*

*Figure 22*

Development of PBR textures through Adobe Substance Sampler. Textures in figure 23 were created for the base landscape of the environment. An image was imported into sampler and then edited in certain ways, additional detail of mud, dust and dirt was added through the Sampler.
*Figure 23*
### Photogrammetry

## References
Books-

Jordan, M. and Hinds, J. (2016). Ecotherapy : theory, research and practice. London: Macmillan Education/Palgrave.

McGeeney, A 2016, With Nature in Mind : The Ecotherapy Manual for Mental Health Professionals, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [27 October 2022].

## Links to continue on
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-and-treatments/talking-therapy-and-counselling/ecotherapy/#WhatIsEcotherapy
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/nature-and-mental-health/how-nature-benefits-mental-health/#:~:text=Spending%20time%20in%20nature%20has,with%20mild%20to%20moderate%20depression.
https://www.mind.org.uk/media/4418/ecominds-effects-on-mental-wellbeing-evaluation-report.pdf
https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/abstract/
https://www.animalfunfacts.net/knowledge/362-animals-of-the-forest.html
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/ProductionPipelines/MultiUserEditing/QuickStart/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProductionPipelines/MultiUserEditing/QuickStart/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiLsYx28S24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaIxZT_gLw0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tYF-Bwp91U