From the archive
21 Aug 2026
On a spring morning in Glenmoriston, two groups of Highland schoolchildren got off a bus at Dundreggan, a rewilding estate above Loch Ness where Trees for Life has been letting the Caledonian forest come back for nearly twenty years. Aged eleven to fourteen, from Farr and Kinlochleven High Schools, they spent the day pond dipping, learning to tell one tree from another and lighting fires the old way. Then, in workshops, the researchers asked them what would actually help.
The visits were part of Healthy Young Minds, a nature-based early-intervention research programme run by the University of South Wales with the University of the Highlands and Islands and Dundee University, funded by the Medical Research Council. Its premise is that mental-health difficulties often surface in early adolescence, and that rural teenagers face them behind infrastructure and social barriers, isolation among them. Rather than hand pupils a finished programme, the researchers asked them to co-produce one.
In sessions facilitated by Ewen's Room, a Highland mental-health charity, the young people listed what they thought would lift their wellbeing outdoors: camping, fire-building, hill walking, wild swimming, beach combing, outdoor cafés, natural crafts, board games, family activities. Each idea got feedback from other young people and from green-health specialists, then the pupils refined the list and voted on their favourites.
The workshops also taught the five ways to wellbeing - connecting with others, learning new skills, giving, being active, and taking notice of small things - but framed around places the children already live among. Afterwards, the students reported that they now saw nature as important to their mental health, went outside more, and thought about other people more. The research team is writing up two papers and looking for further funding, while keeping contact with the schools to turn the pupils' chosen activities into something that runs.
The setting carries some of the weight. Dundreggan holds over four thousand recorded plant and animal species, many rare, and its rewilding centre has forest trails, a café, a storytelling bothy and bunk accommodation for forty. The partnership around the project - NHS Highland's child and adolescent mental health services, Ewen's Room, the young people's charity Kinlochlovin', and the Highland Green Health Partnership - suggests the day out was the easy part, and the infrastructure around it is the real work.
Ask the young people first. A youth group or school can run the same exercise in an afternoon: a walk somewhere wild, then a list, a vote, and one chosen activity to pilot - wild swimming, a fire circle, a beach comb. Costs are a bus hire and a flask; the partner that matters is a local mental-health charity to hold the sessions.
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