A social alternative to prescribing chemical anti-depressants

Sam’s plan was simple.

Around the corner from the medical center was an ugly scratch of scrub and concrete that the locals dubbed “Dog Shit Alley”— a messy place that contained nothing but weeds and (as the name suggests) dog shit.

A group of twenty chronically anxious patients had to turn this ugly wasteland into a garden.

They had one member of the staff to coordinate, but otherwise, it’s yours, Sam said; Help us make it beautiful.

On that first day, Lisa looked at the patch and then looked at the other volunteers anxiously. She made nervous and halting conversation with the other members of the group. She met a white working-class man who told her he had dropped out of school. There were two people with serious learning difficulties. And there were some middle-class people who couldn’t shake off their own blues.

They were city people — they didn’t have a clue.

They had, they realized, to learn about nature.

It was a slow process.

Normally, depressed or anxious people are put in a position where they have to talk about how they feel, but often that’s the last thing they want to do. Their feelings are unbearable. Here they had a place where there was something slow and steady to do, and there was no pressure to talk about anything but that. But as they began to trust one another, they would talk about how they felt—at a pace they felt comfortable with.

As time passed, the group began to see their flowers bloom. People started to walk through the park, and they would thank this group—who had been shut away, feeling useless, for so long—for what they were doing.

...

This is a slightly modified excerpt from chapter 17 of a book called 'Lost Connections' by Johann Hari.