The Use of Gardening and Green Space Therapy in Mental Health is Increasingly Important

Abstract

In many countries, including the United Kingdom (UK), Health Services are under increasing pressure of workload and since this will inexorably continue, even with appropriately increased funding, every attempt to improve the health of the population and prevent illness must be welcomed. Thus gardening and green care, which are forms of complementary therapy and social prescribing, are cheap, safe and effective treatments for mental and physical problems, and can help to improve the disparity between the efficacy of treatments for physical and mental health1,2,3. Such alternatives to increasingly expensive drug therapies must be studied and applied, if only to reduce the incidence of the increasingly complex side effects of drugs, and the large number of admissions to hospital and deaths that are attributed to these.