For the last handful of years, Britain and the United States have done quiet experiments with a new form of therapy for veterans suffering from combat stress, using a resource neither nation lacks along their coasts: surf.
“Ocean therapy,” or surf therapy, will surprise longtime surfers mainly because of the official-sounding name; the idea that an ocean and a surfboard can be good for the body and mind is otherwise not very new. But recent studies have tried to quantify just what happens in the water.
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service is still conducting trials in Cornwall, where waves wash in from the Atlantic, to determine whether “surf therapy” deserves taxpayer support. The idea caused outrage at the Daily Mail, where outrage is a business model.
“It’s important that the NHS uses its funds for medicine and equipment rather than watersports,” a British taxpayers’ advocate, Fiona McEvoy, told the Mail late last year. National Health defended the trials on the grounds that they were cheap — £250, or about $400 per person — and aimed at saving money on demand for antidepressants and other drug therapies.
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