Our society has become less physically active (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010) and less connected to nature than ever before (Berger & Mcleod, 2006). Spending leisure time indoors, technological advancements, urban living, and car dependent communities have led to these changes (Dustin, Bricker, & Schwab, 2010; Hansen-Ketchum, Marck, & Reutter, 2009; Norman & Mills, 2004). As a result, physical health and mental health is deteriorating (Dustin et al., 2010; Maller, Townsend, Pryor, Brown & Leger, 2005). Physical activity and nature can each produce mental and physical health benefits; some approaches such as adventure-based counseling and wilderness therapy already incorporate these elements. A promising alternative approach using physical activity and nature has received attention in recent years. Walk and talk therapy has been described as an intervention that combines counseling, walking, and the outdoors (Doucette, 2004). Despite, a small number of therapists using the approach (Gontang, 2009), anecdotal research (Hays, 1994), and a description of the approach (Doucette, 2004), little is known about walk and talk therapy. In this qualitative study 11 therapists were interviewed about their experiences with walk and talk therapy. Main themes of the study suggested characteristics, a procedure, reasons walk and talk therapy evolved, limitations, outcomes, and a framework for practice for walk and talk therapy. Therapists believe walk and talk therapy is beneficial for clients as well as therapists. Implications for therapists, researchers, and counselor educators are provided.

Standards of healthcare exist to promote beneficent treatment; however, treatment approaches are sometimes not supported by research, creating potential ethical issues for clinicians expected to use evidence-based practices. For example, walk-and-talk therapy, where therapy sessions incorporate physical activity in an outdoor setting, is being offered at increasing rates, but research regarding the practice is sparse and primarily reflects the therapists' experiences. Thus, the purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analytic study was to explore the clients' experience of the altered frame of walk-and-talk therapy through the conceptual lenses of therapeutic frame and the biopsychosocial model of well-being. Data were collected through in-depth, semistructured interviews with a sample of three former walk-and-talk therapy clients, and data were analyzed using the modified van Kaam method. Findings included that the clients' experience of walk-and-talk therapy was shaped by prior therapy experiences with participants reporting concerns and benefits related to the altered frame. Clients found walk-and-talk equally or more therapeutic than traditional therapy and felt walk-and-talk could be a less stigmatizing therapeutic alternative for individuals who find traditional, indoor therapy unappealing. Implications for social change include shaping standard practices of walk-and-talk therapy, thus informing the future of training and supervision as well as providing an alternative therapeutic offering for individuals who find traditional, indoor therapy unappealing.

The fields of psychology and rhetoric share the goal of improving human mental health and behavior through persuasion. This thesis traces the history of rhetoric and psychology theory, focusing on the parallel theories of Nienkamp's internal rhetoric and Herman's dialogical self. Both theories model the human mind as having multiple psyches that actively interact to interpret human experience and project human behavior. I conclude with a case study of anorexic patients using ethos, pathos, and logos in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), arguing that principles of rhetoric can help patients with mental disorders cognitively realign their thinking more effectively than drug treatments can.