Benefits Of Therapeutic Horticulture In Institutionalized Patients With Mental Health Disorders Within An Organic Environment

Summary

Therapeutic horticulture (TH) is a non-pharmacological approach to assist other psychiatric treatments and should be carried out according to organic principles for health reasons. The benefits of TH in individuals with mental health conditions can be found in the literature. However, it is scarce the information to understand if TH activities have advantages when compared to more conventional occupational therapies (OT), and this is the main objective of the present study. It was led in a psychiatric hospital in Portugal with 25 patients attending TH amongst other OT and 15 patients attending only OT. The instruments used were two questionnaires of sociodemographic and clinical data and patients’ preferences, and two evaluation instruments, the ‘Subjective Happiness Scale’ (SHS) and the short form of the ‘Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults’ (SELSA-S).The scores of the SHS and SELSA-S were generally similar for TH and OT groups, except the 'optimism about life' with a lower optimistic perception of life for the TH patients. It was found that the activities of TH were preferred to other OT by 48% of the patients in the TH group. The changes perceived by some of these TH patients included the perception of feeling more relaxed and happier. In this group, a greater number of days per week with activities provided lower loneliness and a greater happiness perspective compared to peers. For all patients, visits by family or friends also had a positive effect as revealed by the lower level of family emotional loneliness, compared to patients without visits. The findings and the benefits reported in the literature suggest that TH is an integrative treatment option, which merits further study and can be better tailored to maximize TH effectiveness.