RESEARCH
Nature-Based Interventions in Institutional and Organisational Settings: A Scoping Review
Summary
This document describes a research project that aimed to get a broad picture of how nature-based activities are used in places where people live full-time for care or rehabilitation, like hospitals, care homes, and prisons. The researchers wanted to find out what kinds of nature activities are being offered, such as gardening, animal therapy, or even virtual nature experiences. To do this, they systematically searched through many different collections of research articles to find studies on this topic. They set specific rules for which studies to include, focusing on adults in institutional settings or taking part in nature programs that could be used in these settings. The researchers then looked closely at the details of these studies, such as the type of institution, the people involved, the nature activity itself, and what the studies found. This kind of review helps to map out what we already know about a topic and can point to areas where more in-depth research is needed.
The review identified 85 studies that explored nature-based interventions in various institutional settings. These studies used different methods to see if these activities had an impact on people’s health and well-being. The most common types of interventions studied were gardening and therapeutic horticulture (41 studies), animal-assisted therapies (33 studies), and care farming (8 studies). While the review didn’t formally combine the results of these studies to draw firm conclusions about effectiveness, it noted that generally, favorable impacts were observed across different intervention types, although the specific effects varied widely.
