NEW YORK, NY: Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, a licensed psychologist and author of more than a dozen books on mental health, has released a new four-part Kindle short read series called The Outdoor Cure. The series is based on her full-length book, Get Out! A Shrink's Guide to Using the Great Outdoors as Therapy, and breaks its research down into four short, easy-to-read guides that readers can finish in a single sitting.

Each book in the series focuses on one part of how the outdoors affects mental health, using published research from universities and medical centers around the world. The four titles are:

Book One: The Outdoor Cure: Why Your Brain Needs the Outdoors

Book Two: The Outdoor Cure: Smell, Sound, and Water: The Senses That Heal

Book Three: The Outdoor Cure: You Don't Have to Hike to Heal

Book Four: The Outdoor Cure: Make It Stick: Your Outdoor Habit Plan

"I wanted to take real, published research and put it into plain words that anyone could read and use right away," said Dr. Farrell. "You should not need a medical degree to understand why a walk outside helps you feel better. The science already exists. It just needed to be written in a way that respects the reader's time and intelligence."

The series covers topics including the twenty-minute window in which time outside measurably lowers stress hormones, how sunlight affects mood and sleep, why forest air and birdsong calm the nervous system, and how nature helps people who cannot easily leave their homes due to illness or disability. The final book focuses on the real science of habit formation, addressing the popular myth that new habits take twenty-one days to form and offering a realistic plan for making outdoor time a lasting part of daily life.

Each short read includes a full list of the studies and sources used, so readers can look up the original research for themselves.

The Outdoor Cure series is available now on Kindle in epub and audiobooks. Dr. Farrell is the author of Get Out!, the Fired by the Future career series, the Pocket Companion series, and several other books on mental health, resilience, and coping with life's hardest moments.