Читать книгу Natural Environments and Human Health - Alan W Ewert - Страница 40

An important development during the early 1900s was the academic world believing that nature is therapeutic. One of the first examples in modern time is the blossoming of the academic field of horticultural therapy. In 1955 the University of Michigan developed a combination horticultural and occupational therapy master’s degree and others followed. The groundwork was laid earlier. In the 1920s horticulture therapy began to be practiced in occupational therapy and then showed up in occupational therapy textbooks. The Association for Occupational Therapists in England formally acknowledged the use of horticulture therapy as a treatment for certain psychiatric and physical disorders in 1936. In 1942 Milwaukee Downer College offered a course in horticulture therapy within its occupational therapy degree program; the first such course known to be offered in a US institution of higher learning. During World War II garden club volunteers partnered with occupational therapists to use plants and gardening activities for rehabilitation. McDonald (1995) reported that use of this therapeutic practice for World War II veterans provided important testing and showed the validity of its use in physical and mental rehabilitation, including reduced hospital stays. This involvement by garden club members continues today. Louis Lipp, a propagator for the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, developed a horticultural therapy program as an outreach program at a nearby veterans’ hospital in 1953. In 1951, Alice Burlingame, a trained psychiatric social worker at the Pontiac, Michigan State Hospital, started a horticulture program in the hospital’s geriatric ward (Lewis, 1976). Burlingame became convinced of the validity of this method with geriatric populations, and she persuaded Dr Donald Watson to jointly convene a weeklong workshop in horticulture therapy at Michigan State University, which then led to the eventual degree. The two teamed to write the first textbook, Therapy Through Horticulture, in 1960. The first degree recipient, Genevieve Jones, who worked as an occupational therapist at the Hines Veterans Administration Hospital in Chicago, went on to write the Handbook of Horticulture Therapy published by the Federation of Garden Clubs in Michigan, the organization that provided Jones a scholarship to pursue her degree. New York University Medical Center’s Rusk Institute for Rehabilitative Medicine’s horticultural therapy program was so effective that the horticultural therapist was made part of the treatment team with doctors and psychologists, using horticulture both diagnostically and rehabilitatively—a first for people with disabilities. It was called the ‘glass garden program’ because it operated in a greenhouse.

In 1971–1972, a curriculum was developed at Kansas State University providing students with training in horticulture and psychology leading to a bachelor’s degree in Horticultural Therapy followed by a 7-month clinical internship at the Menninger Foundation (Lewis, 1976). Clemson University was the second institution of higher education to offer a horticultural therapy degree.

In England two organizations, the Society for Horticultural Therapy and Rural Training and the Federation to Promote Horticulture for Disabled People, were formed with more of a focus on practice rather than the US focus of professionalizing the practice. The mission of the Society for Horticultural Therapy and Rural Training was ‘To relieve persons who are physically or mentally ill, disabled or handicapped, or who are in necessitous circumstances, by the advancement of education in the use of land through horticulture, agriculture, farming and gardening in all their forms’.

Today horticultural therapy is described as: ‘a professionally conducted clientcentered treatment modality that utilizes horticulture activities to meet specific therapeutic or rehabilitative goals of its participants. The focus is to maximize social, cognitive, physical and/or psychological functioning and/or to enhance general health and wellness’ (Haller and Kramer, 2006).

The success of horticultural therapy may be its non-threatening, familiar modes of therapy and rehabilitation. It has been shown to be successful with people who have physical, mental, psychological, or developmental disabilities, as well as those who are victims of abuse, prisoners, young children, and older adults. Horticultural therapy has been shown to help people recover from illness as well as help spiritually heal those who will not recover and who seek quality of life in their final days. Horticultural therapy seems to appeal to gardeners at all levels of involvement.

Horticultural therapy has grown to occupy a useful position within the healthcare system. The People–Plant Council formed in 1990 to document existing research and to encourage new research uses an interdisciplinary symposium, ‘The Role of Horticulture in Human Well-Being and Social Development’, as one venue to distribute horticultural therapy trends and information.