HEAL Series: Gardening Can Improve Mental Well-being
By Paula Baniotaite, Healthier Jupiter Intern
Mental health is a key element to a person’s overall health. It plays an equally important role as healthy eating and active living to ensure people live their healthiest life. To help make sense of mental health’s role in healthy living, Healthier Jupiter worked with a student intern from Florida Atlantic University’s John D. MacArthur Campus to research various topics related to mental health and healthy eating or active living. In the HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living) Series, read about promising interventions encouraging people to engage both mentally and physically in healthy behaviors. The following blog post looks at gardening’s impact on mental well-being for a variety of communities.
Growing your own food may seem like a thing of the past, but researchers are continuing to discover mental health benefits that gardening and horticultural practices may have on individuals. In fact, the American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA) has been developed in order to promote horticultural therapy as a therapeutic intervention.
When it comes to the umbrella term of horticultural therapy, it can consist of activities such as indoor and outdoor gardening, collecting natural elements, passively interacting with nature and cooking (Spano et al., 2020). This nature based therapy may also consist of observing nature, manipulating plants and flowers and creating food products such as jams.
The meta-analysis conducted by Spano et al., (2020) investigated whether horticultural therapies centering around community gardening would influence individuals’ psychosocial well-being. Findings showed that community gardening had a more positive influence on people in individualistic countries, such as the US. This aligned with previous research showing that community gardening allowed the spread of social interaction, mutual support and feelings of cohesion (Spano et al., 2020). Gardening activities also showed positive effects in cognitive, physical and psychosocial well-beings of elderly individuals; long-term positive effects were also discovered when gardening was implemented in elderly individuals’ daily lives (Spano et al., 2020).
A study conducted by Grabbe, Ball and Goldstein (2013), aimed to explore the effects of gardening on the mental well-being of homeless women. A southeastern state homeless shelter initiated a garden project involving physical activities outdoors, horticultural and nutritional education, stress reduction and healthy food prep education (Grabbe et al., 2013). The results of this project showed that the women felt the garden provided them with a way to clear their minds, as well as giving them something to look forward to in their otherwise stressful days. Women also self-reported feeling less depressed when tending to their herbs, feeling less marginalized as homeless women, as well as feeling a sense of community with those they would have previously not interacted with (Grabbe et al., 2013).
Likely partners to address some of these practices may include homelessness centered organizations as well as businesses or organizations coordinating Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).
The HEAL Series focusing on mental health’s connection to healthy eating and active living is part of an internship opportunity with FAU John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter student Paula Baniotaite. Paula holds a Bachelor's in Psychology.Strong advocate for mental health and spending time in nature. Animal lover. Avid hiker and camper. Dedicated to spreading the message about healthy eating habits and living an active life. Proud vegan. If you are interested in interning with Healthier Jupiter, please contact joanna.peluso@jupitermed.com.
READ MORE IN THE HEAL SERIES
Sources:
Spano, G., D'Este, M., Giannico, V., Carrus, G., Elia, M., Lafortezza, R., Panno, A., & Sanesi, G. (2020). Are Community Gardening and Horticultural Interventions Beneficial for Psychosocial Well-Being? A Meta-Analysis. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(10), 3584. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103584
Grabbe, L., Ball, J., & Goldstein, A. (2013). Gardening for the mental well-being of homeless women. Journal of Holistic Nursing : Official Journal of the American Holistic Nurses’ Association, 31(4), 258–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0898010113488244