Horticultural therapy program for mental health of prisoners: Case report.

BACKGROUND: The restricted environment in prison negatively affects psychological health of prisoners, which in turn affects the rehabilitation of the prisoners. Previous studies have shown that horticultural activities were effective in improving psychological health of prisoners. The objectives were to develop a horticultural therapy (HT) program and to determine the association of 12 sessions with participants' psychological health using case analysis. METHODS: Five cases who were imprisoned at K correctional institution in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea participated in this study. They were diagnosed as a potential risk group of psychological health. The prisoners participated in a HT program once a week (12 weeks, 90 min per session) between April and June 2018 at K correctional institution. The program consisted of cultivation-centered horticultural activities. At the completion of the HT program, depression (Beck Depression Inventory), anger (State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory), self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale), and life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale) were evaluated. Positive changes were found through observations of interviews, workbooks, and emotional change checklists that were recorded in each session. RESULTS: We observed positive changes in the prisoners' health conditions measured before and after participating in the HT program. The prisoners who participated in the HT program showed decreased depression (-2.6), and increased self-esteem (+1.2) and life satisfaction (+4.0). CONCLUSIONS: The prisoner rehabilitation HT program was associated with improvements in the participants' psychological health. Future efforts will be required to investigate the effects of an HT program with a larger sample size to perform statistical analysis for providing convincing evidence.

Care Farming Program for Family Health: A Pilot Study with Mothers and Children.

We designed a pilot study to develop a family interaction model-integrated a care farming program with mother-child pairs as the participants. In this pilot study, we aimed to assess the effects of the care farming program on communication skills and psychological health in families. Sixteen mother-child pairs in Sejong, South Korea participated in this study. The families participated in a care farming program once a week for six weeks (90 min per session) between May and July 2018. The care farming program was developed based on parenting education skills, strengths-based cognitive behavioral therapy, and the emotional intelligence model; the result was a family interaction model intended to improve communication and psychological health among mothers and children. The program consisted of gardening activities such as making a garden plot, planting transplants, harvesting, and cooking the harvested crops. Upon completion of the six-session program, we evaluated communication with the Parent-Children Communication Inventory, depression with the Beck Depression Inventory, and resilience with the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale among the mothers. We also evaluated emotional intelligence among the children with the Emotional Intelligence Scale. According to post-intervention results, mothers showed significantly increased resilience, improved communication skills with their child, and decreased depression, while children showed significantly improved emotional intelligence (p < 0.05). Despite the study's limitation in establishing causality between the care farming program and the observed effects on family health, the care farming program clearly contributed to the observed improvements of mother-child communication skills, mothers' psychological health, and children's emotional intelligence, which in turn improved overall family health.

Nature-Based Interventions for Mental Health Care: Social Network Analysis as a Tool to Map Social Farms and their Response to Social Inclusion and Community Engagement.

Social farming represents a hybrid governance model in which public bodies, local communities, and economic actors act together to promote health and social inclusion in rural areas. Although relational variables are crucial to foster social farm performance, the relational system in which farms are embedded has still not been fully described. Using social network analysis, here we map the nature of the links of a selected sample of social farms operating in Northern Italy. We also explore possible network variations following specific actions taken to potentiate local social farming initiatives. The results show a certain degree of variability in terms of the extension and features of the examined networks. Overall, the actions taken appear to be significant to enlarge and diversify farms' networks. Social farming has the potential to provide important benefits to society and the environment and to contrast vulnerability in rural areas. Being able to create social and economic networks of local communities, social farming may also represent an innovative way to respond to the cultural shift from institutional psychiatry to community-based mental health care. This study emphasizes the critical role played by network facilitation in diversifying actors, promoting heterogeneous relationships, and, in turn, system complexity.

A pilot programme evaluation of social farming horticultural and occupational activities for older people in Italy.

The aim of this study was to evaluate a 1-year social farming programme conducted between 2014 and 2015, including horticultural and occupational activities on six agricultural farms for older people in good general health. Social farming is a practice that uses agricultural resources to provide health, social or educational services to vulnerable groups of people. Activity participation, social relationships, physical activity, and the quality of life of the participants were assessed using a pretest, posttest design. A total of 112 subjects were interviewed at baseline, though only 73 participants were retained through the end of the follow-up, resulting in a dropout rate of 34%. Data analysis revealed significant improvements in both social relationships and overall occupational engagement at the end of the programme, with significant increases in the frequency of contact with friends or relatives as well as the number of activities performed by the participants. This work adds to the literature on the effects of social farming and indicates that farming may provide opportunities for older people to engage in activities that stimulate social behaviours.