Why Doctors In Scotland Are Prescribing Nature Walks To Help With Chronic Illness

Scot­tish doc­tors will soon be pre­scrib­ing nature as part of their treat­ment plans for patients. the nature pre­scrip­tions are being rolled out for patients with chron­ic ill­ness­es, and help treat a range of health prob­lems includ­ing anx­i­ety, depres­sion, dia­betes, and high blood pres­sure. Accord­ing , doc­tors in Scot­land are launch­ing the Nature Pre­scrip­tions projectas part of an ini­tia­tive to help Shet­land Islands patients reap the health ben­e­fits of sim­ply spend­ing time out­side. The Guardian reports that doc­tors also rec­om­mend nature pre­scrip­tions as a way to help man­age chron­ic stress.

Patients receiv­ing nature pre­scrip­tions will be giv­en a sea­son­al cal­en­dar, and also a list of walk­ing trails best suit­ed for bird-watch­ing, sea­son­al out­door activ­i­ties, and dis­cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent types of plants. Per the cal­en­dar, patients are encour­aged to “write a wor­ry onto a stone and throw it into the sea,” or “look out for hump­back whales on their autumn migra­tion.” Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions include mak­ing daisy chains, eat­ing a three course meal with fam­i­ly out­doors, tak­ing the time to appre­ci­ate a cloud, and talk­ing to a pony. Per the nature pre­scrip­tions cal­en­dar, “Soli­tude in nature clar­i­fies thought — carve out some time to your­self and go explore some­where you’ve nev­er been before.”

 the Roy­al Soci­ety of Birds Scot­land (RSBS) cre­at­ed the cal­en­dars and walk­ing trail leaflets for doc­tors in 10 pub­lic health clin­ics through­out Shet­land Islands to hand out to patients. Accord­ing to a recent RSBS press release, the Nature Pre­scrip­tions part­ner­ship project between the Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) Shet­land and RSBS Scot­land is the first of its kind in the UK, and is offi­cial­ly rolling out after a suc­cess­ful pilot pro­gram was test­ed last year. It’s fur­ther not­ed in the press release that “Nature Pre­scrip­tions rec­og­nizes the ben­e­fits of nature on reduc­ing blood pres­sure, reduc­ing anx­i­ety and increas­ing hap­pi­ness as well as the grow­ing dis­con­nec­tion with nature through­out soci­ety.”

Dr. Chloe Evans, a pri­ma­ry care doc­tor at Scal­loway Health Cen­ter was quot­ed in the press release as say­ing that “I want to take part because the project pro­vides a struc­tured way for patients to access nature as part of a non-drug approach to health prob­lems. The ben­e­fits to patients are that it is free, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, [and] allows increased con­nec­tion with sur­round­ings which hope­ful­ly leads to improved phys­i­cal and men­tal health for indi­vid­u­als.”

The Guardian fur­ther reports that while patients will be encour­aged to wan­der beach­es look­ing for shells, explore coastal trails, and bird­watch, nature pre­scrip­tions aren’t intend­ed as a sub­sti­tute for oth­er forms of med­ical care. Nature pre­scrip­tions are designed as a sup­ple­ment to con­ven­tion­al med­ical treat­ments

Dr. Evans told The­Guardian that “There are mil­lions of dif­fer­ent ways of doing med­i­cine but we very much try to involve peo­ple in their own health, and peo­ple real­ly like being empow­ered.” Shet­land Islands also boasts a “fan­tas­tic wild land­scape,” Dr. Evans fur­ther notes, and patients will also be nudged to get out­side no mat­ter the weath­er or sea­son. Per the sea­son­al cal­en­dar, patients in the win­ter months are still urged to get out­side — even if just for short amounts of time.

Direc­tives such as “Step out­side — be still for three min­utes and lis­ten,” and draw­ing snow­drops are some of the sug­ges­tions for the cold­er months. Ulti­mate­ly, patients are urged to “Get out what­ev­er the weath­er, and feel the exhil­a­ra­tion of wind and rain on your face,” in order to main­tain the con­nec­tion to nature year round. And on that note, I think I’ll wan­der out­side and appre­ci­ate a cloud.