Doctors
should prescribe gardening far more often for patients with cancer,
dementia and mental health problems, the NHS has been urged in a new
report.
Outdoor spaces including gardens can reduce social isolation among
older people as well as help patients recover and manage conditions such
as dementia, according to the influential King’s Fund health thinktank.
Jane Ellison, the public health minister, backed the plan, which could see GPs
in particular advising patients to spend more time outside as a way of
alleviating their symptoms. “[Gardening] is profoundly good for you …
[it] is a great way of keeping people active, of keeping them outside
and keeping their sense of wellbeing very high,” she said. “There are
things we can do around physical activity in particular that bring
immediate payback ... I’m trying to put this right across the agenda of
dementia and cancer.”
Parts of the country are already investing in this more social
approach to health at primary care level and in some places, such as the
Bromley by Bow Centre in London, GPs are already prescribing gardening.
Such schemes have been proven to reduce patients’ need to see a GP or
attend A&E, enhance wellbeing and even promote better sleep.
Schemes that use this type of social prescribing focus on mental
health and wellbeing as much as physical health, including through
reducing social isolation and strengthening community bonds.
“Social prescribing schemes, by their nature, vary considerably but
generally provide a way for GPs and other primary care professionals to
offer or signpost to non-clinical referral options instead of, or
alongside, clinical ones,” says the report’s author, David Buck.
Read more here
