The importance of the Natural Health Service

Most people consider going for a walk or a run as a sort of optional leisure activity, something you get round to once you’ve been to the shops. But when the government announced its coronavirus restrictions, there it was in its own category of ‘essential activities’: daily exercise.

Yes, there have been rows about whether sunbathing or sitting on a bench to eat a snack are acceptable, but by and large the message has been clear: we need to get outside to stay well. But it’s not just exercise that’s essential to our lives, it’s nature too.

We have become used to thinking of nature as something we need to travel to see, a middle-class luxury along the lines of buying expensive cheese or owning a labradoodle: nice, but not the stuff of staying alive.

And yet there is a growing body of research that shows our minds and our bodies need nature. I’ve spent the past few years interviewing the scientists behind this research, visiting psychiatric hospitals and following people with mental illnesses as they try to manage their conditions using the great outdoors, and I’ve become convinced by the power of what I call the Natural Health Service.

Since the 1980s we have learned that views of nature — even just from a window — can help patients recover from surgery, improve mood, reduce anxiety and stress and raise self-esteem. Exercising in green spaces reduces someone’s perception of pain, which means they’re able to keep going and enjoy themselves for longer. Exercise itself both helps prevent mental illness and improves the symptoms of those suffering from it, and that includes serious, life-limiting conditions such as schizophrenia.