Social farming as an innovative approach to promote mental health, social inclusion and community engagement.

Nature-based contextual factors are being recognized as fundamental for mental health prevention and promotion. Rural areas, indeed, are increasingly recognized as an elective place for the promotion of mental health. In recent years there has been a surge of rurally-based hybrid governance models in which public bodies, local communities and economic actors join forces to create innovative welfare solutions to facilitate the financial (and organizational) challenges faced by the National Health Systems. Using agricultural resources, such as animals and plants, social farming is able to address specific social needs, including rehabilitation, sheltered employment, life-long education and other activities that contribute to social inclusion. At the same time social farming is able to strengthen the economic and social viability of rural communities. We have been studying the factors underlying the potentiality of social farms to provide job placement programs and rehabilitation for people with mental disorders. Using novel methodologies and appropriate tools, we have been collecting data indicating the positive effects of farming activities on individual's social functioning, as well as the impact of farms' networking on system's sustainability.

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.