Article Review: therapeutic benefits of a specific activity

    The title of the article was "War Narratives Veteran Stories, PTSD Effects, and Therapeutic Fly-Fishing" from the Therapeutic Recreation Journal. It was written by Rasul A. Mowatt and Jessie Bennett. I located this article when I was doing research on PTSD for another class earlier this week.
    This article was about research that was done on veterans from several wars spanning from Vietnam to Operation New Dawn who had been diagnosed with Post-traumatic stress Disorder. The vets were part of a fly-fishing program in Utah that was meant to help relieve symptoms of PTSD. After the program was done, the vets wrote letters to the person or company who financially sponsored their trip. This letter writing was part of the therapy. The researchers then did a studied the letters and broke them down to determine 1) what they say 2 how they say that and 3) what the readers reaction to the letters was.
    From this article I learned that the letter writing worked similarly to writing a journal, but in this case it was also the reflection for the activity instead of the activity itself. By writing letters vets were able to look back on their experience fishing and decide if it was something they enjoyed and wanted to continue, but they were also able to write about their experiences with PTSD. The fishing groups worked like support groups, but in a less formal manner. Vets were able to receive therapy while doing a recreation activity they enjoyed: exactly what TR means to me.
    I would recommend this article to other TR students because it told me about not just the activity, but how they analyzed it and used it for research. It showed how a study doesn't have to be solely a study, but instead it can be a TR activity that is already planned. They just took it one more step in looking at the letters that were written to evaluate how well the program worked.