Скачать или смотреть Gardening is Treatment for mental & physical benifits

There is increasing evidence that exposure to plants and green space, and particularly to gardening, is beneficial to mental and physical health, and so could reduce the pressure on NHS services. Health professionals should therefore encourage their patients to make use of green space and to work in gardens, and should pressure local authorities to increase open spaces and the number of trees, thus also helping to counteract air pollution and climate change.

There is anxiety that the NHS cannot cope now and in the future with the health needs of an increasing and ageing population. It is also realised that pharmaceutical drugs, transformative though they have been, are increasingly expensive and are not always as effective as they appear in the results of early, enthusiastically reported, clinical trials. Drugs are also prescribed at the cost of side effects, which are a leading cause of admissions to hospital, particularly for the elderly, who are poorly represented in trials.

Health depends on a range of social, economic and environmental factors, as is emphasised by the shaming disparity between the length of life in different areas of the country.1 In addition to improving the information given to patients and health professionals on the true efficacy of drugs and on their risks, and thus empowering choices for patients, there are opportunities to treat some physical and mental conditions with alternative or complementary therapies, and to encourage changes in lifestyle. Such treatments could reduce the workload and financial pressure on the NHS, particularly in primary care, but they clearly must only be recommended by health professionals if there is good evidence that they are effective; many are without merit. Ten million of the UK population are defined as disabled, among them 6.9 million of working age. Can we do better for these people without using drugs?