Just since 2012, Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Inc. has served over 65,000 veterans, including a growing number of women, suffering from physical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The organization also supports veteran amputees, many of whom have learned to tie flies with one arm.
Fly tying and rod building also help vets recover motor skills. The camaraderie and the fishing help with PTSD, anxiety, and depression – all vital to reducing the veteran suicide rate. An army of volunteers helps these healing veterans, combining fishing with stream rehabilitation, mangrove removal, and trash pickup – all needed to preserve the vitality of fly-fishing streams.
As Project Healing Waters enters its twentieth year, current CEO John Langford is confident, based on two decades of anecdotal evidence, that fly fishing has been a powerful tool in helping disabled veterans heal from PTSD.
But now, thanks to a partnership with the digital therapeutics company MindStreet, Project Healing Waters may soon be able to provide scientific evidence of just how the organization benefits veterans.
According to Langford, storytelling and qualitative information around the healing power of the outdoors, and fly fishing in particular, are powerful evidence. But from a business standpoint - seeking grants and other financial support – that’s not enough.
“To qualify for a grant from the Wounded Warrior Project,” Langford said, “you need data to support your application. Without that data, you will not even get an invitation to apply for a grant. That recognition made becoming a data-driven organization a major priority.”
According to Board Chair Blain Tomlinson, human capital executive Jerry Bratkovich suggested working with MindStreet to increase the validation of Project Healing Waters’s programs.
Working together, MindStreet and Project Healing Waters designed a pilot study, now in progress, to collect quantitative data in the veterans’ mental health space. The purpose, said, Langford, is “to show that our programs actually work in supporting traumatic growth, building resilience, and reducing isolation that can lead to veteran suicides.”
Langford calls the collaboration with MindStreet “one of the most significant sea changes” for the organization since its inception.
MindStreet’s Dr. Jesse Wright created the “Good Days Ahead” digital program out of his cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) training with a goal to help people address mental health conditions. The former military psychiatrist and lifelong fly fisherman says he is thrilled to play a role in helping Project Healing Waters build a quantitative record of what everyone hopes will show its success.
The CBT program, now used at major universities, has been shown to work in over 400 randomized controlled trials, is the model for the “historic” Project Healing Waters trials. Wright calls the Institutional Review Board-reviewed program, which is based not on psychoanalysis but on how participants cope with trauma, depression, and anxiety, as a “pragmatic approach to self-care.”
According to MindSteeet CEO Brian Mayhugh, one objective is to determine whether the nature-based fly-fishing program can be combined with a digital CBT program to help veterans heal, feel, and stay better.
Volunteers participate in an assessment that includes some critical mental health markers a week before the week-long outdoors program. They interact with a computer program that teaches them some of the basics therapists use to teach patients. The assessments are done digitally using a landing page designed specifically for the veterans’ study.
Four weeks after the week of fly fishing, the participants undergo a second assessment. This avoids measuring any euphoric high from the week with friends in the outdoor fly-fishing environment and enables better determinations as to whether the results are sustained over time.
To date, about 200 veterans have participated in the study, with another 30 or so by yearend -- a sample size sufficient to avoid having to recruit outside the Project Healing Waters community.
According to Langford, the Good Days Ahead program, as modified to suit the veterans, is fast becoming an intake tool that will help Project Healing Waters be better prepared to address the challenges facing America's heroes as they returning from deep wounds in support of country.
Though women are a minority in the military, and in the fly-fishing community, several of the Veterans participants are women, including the founders of the “Women on the Fly” initiative within Project Healing Waters. Project Healing Waters creative director A. J. Gottschalk says that many had separated from the military as a result of both combat- and non-combat-related trauma.
Many of the women in the pilot study were attending one of the women-only, week-long retreats Project Healing Waters’s two national destinations -- the Freedom Ranch for Heroes in Wise River, Montana, or the Oak Heart Lodge in Newaygo, Michigan. Other women participants have attended co-ed retreats at both locations.
All told, Freedom Ranch hosted 20 weeks of programming this year; Oak Heart Lodge is nearing the end of its 32 weeks of retreats.
Mayhugh says that the data collection for this initial-year pilot study should be completed in mid-January. This includes both the pre- and post-program assessments and utilizing the digital therapeutics for program resilience.
After a thorough analysis, ensuring absolute privacy for all participants, MindStreet and Project Healing Waters hope to announce the results in early spring 2025. As soon as fly-fishing season begins in 2025, the plan is to begin a second round of assessments.
This will include the 20 weeks of Freedom Ranch trips and the 32 weeks at Oak Heart Lodge (including Women on the Fly retreats), but additional opportunities are opening at some Project Healing Waters regional locations.
While entering a trial is an act of courage, because you never know the outcome ahead of time, the MindStreet and Project Healing Waters teams are confident that data-driven evidence will support what they've always known, and what our Veterans are telling us.
“Embracing the majesty of America's outdoors and reestablishing community and camaraderie in the process, through the sport and art of fly fishing, produces impactful, lasting results - a model replicable the country over.”
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.