Rural Spaces, Therapeutic Places?

This paper primarily draws upon the outcomes from a participatory research project. The research team comprising of academics, social work students and service users explored the themes of Disability, Rurality and Tourism with two distinct social groups, older people and people who identify as having mental health distress. This paper focuses upon the latter group. Additional outcomes from my Master’s thesis will also be drawn upon. There has historically been a strong link between ‘therapeutic’ sites of treatment and rural spaces. For economic, psychiatric and social purposes, people who are considered to be lacking in reason, either temporarily or permanently, have found themselves in (usually) forced rural formal communities. This paper will explore the historical precedents of these types of community and critically examine the burgeoning modern ‘care farms’ movement. The paper will then investigate some of the tensions between the supposed therapeutic benefits of rural spaces, notions around the ‘rural idyll’ and the reality of living in a rural environment. The paper will also explore the pressures people with labels of mental illness face to ‘act normal’ for tourists and the resistance offered to the drive to normalise actions and appearance. Using the perspective of people labelled with mental health distress and/or learning difficulties, there will be a discussion of the ways the respondents negotiate a tourist environment and their drive to find a place of sanctuary located in ‘magnificent isolation’.