Experiences of meaning in garden therapy in outpatient psychiatric care in Sweden. A narrative study

Abstract

Background

Support has been found for using garden therapy as form of intervention for clients with common mental disorders, but no consensus has been found for what contributes to perceived meaningfulness of garden therapy.

Aims

To investigate whether participants perceived garden therapy as meaningful, and if so, what contributed to the meaningfulness.

Material and methods

Narrative individual interviews were conducted twice with six participants who participated in garden therapy and once with two participants. Data was analysed using narrative methodology.

Results

Perceived meanings in garden therapy were associated to the participants’ individual needs and prerequisites: to land, just be, relax, go back to basics, understand, verbalise, enhance energy, and socialise. The group leaders had an important role to create safety and trust, and to adapt the activities and use of the environment. The activities, the garden environment and social group contributed to perceived meaning in garden therapy.

Conclusions

Garden therapy offered the participants possibilities to meet their different needs and thereby perceived meaning. To achieve this, the group leaders need to adapt the gardening individually to each participant.

Significance

Various components were perceived as meaningful. The group leaders therefore have to adapt the garden therapy to each participant’s needs.

Keywords:

• Common mental disorders
• gardening
• interviews
• recovery
• nature-based
• qualitative research
• occupational group

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the informants who shared their narratives with us. We are very grateful for financial support from the Southern Health Care Region and the Scientific Council in Blekinge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).