The Clinical Application of Horticulture Therapy in Psychiatric Rehabilitation

Horticultural Therapy (HT) uses plants, gardening, and the close relationship between well-beings and plants. It integrates effort, hope, expectation, harvest and the enjoyment of whole process to help people with disabilities. During the process, patient can learn more about themselves and experience the nature.

It can be traced to 1798, Dr. B. Rush found farm work helped people with mental illness. Today, horticulture therapy is well applied in disabilities, elderly and children. It needs detailed evaluation for the condition of illness to achieve optimal efficacy. It contains two parts- to sense and to operate! Patients can relax themselves and learn to work with others, realize the responsibility of caring another life, understand their relationship with environment. Patient can tolerate frustration better via acceptance the withered plants. In cultivation, it trains patient the occupational technique ( to operate instrument), communication, social skill, independence, stable mood.

Based on studies, 0ne third patients with mental illness stabilized after treatment. However, aggressive rehabilitation is necessary to maintain their function. In our study, it plans to incorporate horticulture therapy into psychiatric clinical practice in our hospital. We plan to recruit horticulture therapist, visiting staffs, residents, occupational therapists and nurses to participate the design and operation in class.

This program will recruit patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, organic brain syndrome and other mental illness in our daycare. We will help patients with personal treatment record. We will use case study to report some typical cases. All the cases will be investigated qualitatively with intensive interview to explore the subjective experience on this therapy. We will also use simple questionnaire to found quantitative study in the further.

To sum up, this program helps the connection for horticulture therapy and psychiatric rehabilitation. It promotes " patient-centered" support and offers physical, mental , social, spiritual services. It not only produces academic performance but fulfills the ideal of holistic health care!