Mental Health Effects of Leisure Travel: A Scoping Review

The physical and economic aspects of travel have been widely studied, although mental health aspects of travel have been given little attention in the literature. The existing evidence of wellness tourism and mental health has been increasingly aware over the past decade. Wellness tourism is defined as travel with an explicit purpose of enhancing well-being. Wellness tourism has been investigated for its impact on psychological outcomes such as stress, anxiety, depression, and overall quality of life. Nature-based interventions such as forest bathing, agritourism, and nature immersion were found to be especially effective in reducing stress and improving mood. A study reported a statistically significant improvement in self-compassion and loneliness after a three-day forest retreat in Fukushima, Japan. A similar study reported an increase in vitality and gratitude following a forest-bathing retreat in Italy, though the study was a quasi-experimental design and lack of blinding or long-term follow-up. Agritourism interventions such as a one-day farm visit in Korea demonstrated stress reduction and improvement in mental health status among participants. Other studies also reported on enhanced psychological well-being on nature tourism, however, there could be regional and cultural differences among different studies. Another study which analysed the health risks during travel compared to home. It was observed that all countries could have significantly higher risk of health incidents compared to home. Majority were sunburn, mosquito-bite related health issues, gastrointestinal disturbances such as travellers’ diarrhoea to cholera. Overall, Peru has the highest negative overall health effects as well as the highest risk of transportation related injuries were observed in India and Thailand. Negative mental health incidents were found to be lowest in Tanzania compared to home although it was found to be increased in other countries. It was suggested to conduct counselling on health risks on accident-related, sexual activities as well as pre-travel assessment including mental health in relevant circumstances. Bauer 2021 studied the association of dark tourism and its impact on health aspects of the travellers. It was observed that travellers need pre-travel and post-travel care since dark tourism was found to have impact on psychological experiences. The counselling and level of care may be different on unique dark travel locations. On the contrary, cultural and retreat-based interventions showed improvement in mental health of the participants. A six-day Ayuvedic retreat in the USA showed significant improvement in gratitude, spirituality, and anxiety among participants. However, the study sample was predominantly female. A unique example of cultural tourism was the Human Henge program at the Stonehenge and Avebury. It was observed as sustained improvements in mental wellbeing up to one-year post-intervention. There is so far so scoping review which studied the association between mental health benefits during transnational travels according. There was one study which studied the Ayahuasca and travellers; In summary, current evidence supports the potential of wellness tourism to benefit adult mental health through structured, context-specific interventions. However, methodological weaknesses, including small sample sizes, lack of randomisation, absence of long-term follow-up, and inadequate reporting of adverse effects, limit the strength of conclusions. The objective of this study is to investigate the benefits and risks of different forms of on neurodivergent individuals .