New York is turning to its forests, parks, and wilderness areas to address a mental health crisis that clinical care has struggled to solve for the state's roughly 700,000 veterans.
The state's Department of Veterans' Services is launching a program called Outdoor Rx, which frames outdoor recreation on New York's public lands as a therapeutic intervention for veterans dealing with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other service-related conditions. The state posted a bid through the Office of General Services to find an organization to help run the program.
The stakes are significant. About 20% of post-9/11 veterans screen positive for PTSD, and veteran suicide rates nationally remain roughly 1.5 times the civilian rate. The VA has long faced criticism over wait times and over-reliance on medication. Nature-based programs have gained traction as a lower-cost complement to clinical care, and Congress formalized federal support for them in 2023 through the Accelerating Veterans Recovery Outdoors Act.
Source: NationGraph.
What makes New York's approach notable is geography. The state manages nearly 5 million acres of public land, with the largest holdings in the Adirondacks, the Southern Tier, and the North Country, regions that also have some of the highest veteran suicide rates and the thinnest clinical infrastructure in the state. Rural upstate veterans who live far from VA facilities are often surrounded by the very public lands the program would open up to them. Adirondack Park alone covers 6 million acres, larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon combined.
Downstate, where clinical services are more concentrated, land access is limited.
DVS was elevated to a cabinet-level agency in 2019, and Commissioner Viviana DeCohen has publicly prioritized non-clinical, community-based approaches to veteran wellness. The program fits into Governor Hochul's broader Adventure NY initiative, which has pushed investment in state parks and outdoor programming in recent years. Similar programs operate in Montana, Colorado and Utah, but New York's combination of population size and public land acreage gives it unusual scale.
A contractor will be selected to build out and run the program. When veterans will begin accessing Outdoor Rx services depends on that selection process.
