Climbing out of crime: An outdoor activity framework for rehabilitating insecure family attachments.

我的博士研究探讨了户外活动环境中的冒险如何帮助人们管理具有挑战性的情绪。首先，我们的研究强调，参与社会接受的冒险活动形式，如攀岩，可以提高参与者在日常生活中长达6周的情绪控制感（Willegers等人，2023年）。其次，我们扩展了Bowlby的社会依恋理论（1969），发现那些感觉情感上不受支持的人参加体育活动是为了解决相关的情感困难。我们工作的独创性在于将积极的冒险和社会依恋结合起来，作为恢复不信任和不支持的家庭关系远离反社会冒险的途径。80%的多产成年罪犯在儿童时期就开始犯罪。后期干预对英国经济的估计成本约为每年170亿英镑（Fraser &阿特金斯，2022年）。50年的研究表明，陷入困境的亲子关系可能会促使年轻人从事有害的冒险活动作为应对手段，例如自残，暴力和药物滥用（Boccio & Beaver，2019）。我们的研究旨在为英国陷入困境的家庭提供必要的社交和自我调节技能，使其成为社会的生产力成员，中断螺旋式下降并减少公共成本。目前的奖学金的目的是开发途径，帮助年轻人改变他们的冒险过程，从消极的，（对自己和社会）积极的，通过允许他们在一个支持和发展的环境中冒险。冒险活动提供了一个理想的环境，培养父母和孩子之间的相互依赖（即，安全依恋），通过促进支持性行为来应对风险。管理这些风险将通过学习如何控制他们的情绪和以他们生活中其他地方无法获得的方式寻求社会支持来提高父母和儿童的自尊心（Barlow等人，2013年）。重要的是，这些好处可以转移到日常生活中，提高家庭的能力，以支持彼此的情感需求，作为从事冒险活动的结果（Willegers等人，2023; Woodman等人，2020年）。以攀爬为例，连接父对象和子对象的绳子是连接的物理示例。从儿童的角度来看，这种（绳子）依恋明显依赖于照顾者/父母帮助管理恐惧和确保安全。父母通过对绳子施加张力和口头保证来给孩子提供身体上的安全和情感上的保证。在这样做的时候，攀岩环境的性质练习了一种明确的相互依赖，在这种依赖中，孩子信任父母，而父母同时满足了孩子对安全的依恋需求。将这些经验转移到亲子二元体中的其他领域，会使父母感到能够满足孩子的安全需求，孩子也会在痛苦的时候信任父母。我的博士研究结果和创新的社会问题的传播受到康威理事会，家庭中心，户外产业，青年司法系统，青年服务和教育服务的欢迎。因此，我们所有的合作伙伴都提供了他们的服务，以支持传播我的研究，并为上述研究撰写完整的赠款提案（见附件中的支持信）。我们的合作伙伴和我的目标是证明，在适当的培养下，风险可以用来引导挣扎的家庭远离反社会的冒险行为，走向支持性的关系。换句话说，我们的目标是通过改善英国和全球陷入困境的亲子关系，将我们的理解发展成为具有真实的经济和社会效益的强大而可行的干预措施。这个ESRC博士奖学金是一个基本的垫脚石，使这种潜力，

My PhD research explored how risk-taking in an outdoor activity setting can help people manage challenging emotions. Firstly, our research highlighted that participating in socially accepted forms of risk-taking activities, such as rock climbing, can improve participants' sense of emotional control in daily life for up to 6 weeks (Willegers et al., 2023). Secondly, we expanded Bowlby's Theory of Social Attachment (1969) and found that people who feel emotionally unsupported participate in sporting activities to address the associated emotion difficulty. The originality of our work lies in bringing together positive risk-taking and social attachment as a pathway for rehabilitating untrusting and unsupportive family relationships away from antisocial risk-taking. 80% of prolific adult offenders began committing crimes as children. The estimated cost of late intervention to the UK economy is approximately £17 billion per year (Fraser & Atkins, 2022). Fifty years of research shows that troubled parent-child relationships can push young people towards harmful risk-taking activities as a means of coping, such as self-harm, violence, and substance abuse (Boccio & Beaver, 2019). Our research aims to provide struggling families in Britain with the necessary social and self-regulatory skills to become productive members of society, interrupting a downward spiral and reducing public costs.The aim of the current fellowship is to develop pathways to help young people change their risk-taking course from negative (for the self and for society) to positive, by allowing them to take risks in a supportive and developmental environment. Adventure activities provide an ideal environment for nurturing a co-dependence between parent and child (i.e., secure attachment), by promoting supportive behaviour in response to risk. Managing these risks will improve parents' and children's self-esteem by learning how to control their emotions and seek social support in ways that are not accessible elsewhere in their lives (Barlow et al., 2013). Importantly, these benefits can transfer to daily life, improving family's ability to support each other's emotional needs as a result of engaging in adventure activities (Willegers et al., 2023; Woodman et al., 2020). Taking climbing as an example, the rope connecting both parent and child acts as a physical example of an attachment. This (rope) attachment, from the child's perspective, represents a clear dependence on the caregiver/parent to help manage fear and to ensure safety. The parent provides physical security and emotional reassurance to the child by applying tension to the rope and oral reassurance. In doing so, the nature of the climbing environment exercises a clear co-dependence in which the child places trust in the parent who simultaneously fulfills the child's attachment needs for security. Transferring these experiences to other domains in the parent-child dyad results in the parent feeling able to fulfil the child's needs for security, and the child trusting the parent in times of distress. The dissemination of my PhD findings and innovative responses to costly societal problems has been welcomed by Conwy Council, Family Centres, Outdoor Industry, Youth Justice System, Youth services, and Education Services. As such, all our partners have offered their services in support in disseminating my research and writing completing grant proposals for the aforementioned research (see letters of support in attachments). Our partners and I aim to demonstrate that, nurtured properly, risk can be used to steer struggling families away from antisocial risk-taking and towards supportive relationships. In other words, we aim to develop our understanding into powerful and feasible interventions that have real economic and societal benefits by improving struggling parent-child relationships in the UK and globally. This ESRC doctoral fellowship is a fundamental steppingstone for bringing this potential to