Engaging with nature for mental health and wellbeing: post lockdown challenges for green social prescribing
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic there was a significant ongoing shift in public health thinking and practice towards a place-based approach, evidenced in part by the dramatic turn to non-clinical interventions in the form of social prescribing.
Green social prescribing (GSP)- linking people “to nature-based interventions and activities, such as local walking for health schemes, community gardening and food-growing projects”– was also increasingly being seen as a non-medicalised alternative to conventional treatments for common mental health problems.
The Covid pandemic and lockdowns in England saw a growth in social innovation to provide local services, together with a surge of interest in engaging with nature, alongside a huge increase in mental health issues. This suggested strongly that the time was right to develop rapidly an expanded GSP offer. However early findings from our Nature’s Way project suggest that many of the existing barriers to implementation still persist, compounded by new issues connected with the pandemic. This post summarises our findings around the barriers and potentials relating to GSP as we move out of lockdown.