Green Cloud

 After a long gap, filled with random hassle and poor excuses, my good friend Anando has told me that I should not give up on my greenshrink blog. To be fair, a lot of interesting things have been happening - and there is a sort of therapeutically useful processing to be had from putting some of the frustrations and excitements down in words. So here we go again.

A cute little thing that we have been growing for a year or so now is the 'Green Cloud' group - a Covid 19 response, but something that might develop a life of its own in future. If so, that will surely be th esubject of a future blog.

Here's the first section of a paper we're hoping to publish about it - watch out for the full thing in the TC Journal, hopefully/probably in 2022. 

A greencare TC goes online

Introduction

‘Greencare’ is a principle which includes nature as part of therapeutic programmes: the term and its scope were defined in the ‘conceptual framework’ as part of a European Union EU COST Action (Sempik et al., 2010). The evidence base for the mental health benefits of greencare has grown substantially in the last few years (Farmer, 2014; Natural England, 2016). Its use in therapeutic communities is particularly apt (Pearce and Haigh, 2017; Sempik and Haigh, 2008), and has a long and distinguished history of including horticulture (Sempik, 2008), agriculture (Artz and Bitler Davis, 2017; Hine et al., 2008), animal care (Loue, 2016) and permaculture (Hickey, 2008) in its programmes.

 

Our local service is a National Health Service (NHS) ‘micro TC’ called, ‘EMBRACE’, which is a hub for various therapeutic activities across the town (Haigh, 2017); the greencare therapeutic community was one of these activities . It ran as a one-day-per week non-residential TC programme in a yurt at a local environment centre in 2013 (Thrive, 2014; Langford, 2015). Its intention was to provide a safe space in which nature, playfulness and therapeutic support were available to all its members, without the formal and conflictual psychotherapy elements that are often present in TCs.

 

However, when the Covid-19 lockdown prevented any face-to-face therapy groups from taking place, a replacement for this ‘dose of nature’ was required, particularly to help retain and sustain the relational field, and relational practice (Haigh and Benefield, 2020), that had emerged in the original group. This paper is an explanation and evaluation of the online programme that replaced the therapy in the environment centre, with some action research considerations about how it might be developed as an international, and sustainable, therapeutic activity that would not be possible as a face-to-face therapeutic community.

 

Methodology and creation

As soon as the UK Covid-19 lockdown was announced, in March 2020, the existing therapeutic community was forced to stop meeting. As the NHS slowly moved towards a weekly online group on MS Teams, two part-time members of the staff team who are greencare practitioners (RG & VJ) decided to start a more ‘light-hearted’ and playful weekly group on Zoom, run by Growing Better Lives CIC (a greencare social enterprise), in close collaboration with the NHS service’s peer mentors. Peer mentors are akin to experts by experience or lived-experience practitioners: they have completed the EMBRACE programme, and chosen to train and work in a role between service user and clinician (Lees et al., 2019).

 

Its design was not as a psychotherapy group, but a more socially focussed group which all its members (members, staff and peer mentors) would find therapeutic; it included all the elements of the previous face-to-face greencare group, except growing food, preparing meals and eating together.

 

Initial discussions with the peer mentors covered the need to establish safe boundaries, and a quality of ‘belongingness’ (Pearce and Pickard, 2013). The initial and closing community meetings were condensed into a ‘check-in’ at the beginning  and the end of the session (using planticons, see below); the morning activity is to share and discuss our experiences of nature over the past week; lunch was shortened to a quick snack or beverage at home; the afternoon activity is usually a game or quiz; lack of time prevented the co-production of a weekly blog, so this was taken on by staff members. After some initial variability, the group settled into a 90 minute time frame. 

 

Routine evaluation took place by use of planticons to register members’ feelings at the beginning and end of each group, and the blog which documented various aspects of the group and members’ experience of it. Staff and peer mentors all participated equally with the other group members.

 

References

Artz, B., Bitler Davis, D., 2017. Green care: A review of the benefits and potential of animal-assisted care farming globally and in rural America. Animals 7, 31.

Farmer, P., 2014. Ecotherapy for mental health. Journal of Holistic Healthcare 11.

Haigh, R., 2017. A New Biopsychosocial Programme for Emotional Instability: the Slough Model. The Psychotherapist 66, 27–29.

Haigh, R., Benefield, N., 2020. Personality Disorder: breakdown in the relational field, in: Working Effectively with Personality Disorder: A Paradigm Shift. p. in press.

Hickey, B., 2008. Lothlorien community: A holistic approach to recovery from mental health problems. therapeutic communities 29, 261–72.

Hine, R., Peacock, J., Pretty, J., 2008. Care farming in the UK: contexts, benefits and links with therapeutic communities. Therapeutic communities 29, 245–260.

Langford, A., 2015. Growing Better Lives: peace, quiet, and yurts. The Lancet Psychiatry 2, 685–686.

Lees, J., Lomas, F., Haigh, R., 2019. The Third Position. Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities.

Loue, S., 2016. CooperRiis Healing Community, in: Therapeutic Farms. Springer, pp. 69–78.

Natural England, 2016. A review of nature-based interventions for mental health care (NECR204). Natural England, London.

Pearce, S., Haigh, R., 2017. A Handbook of Democratic Therapeutic Community Theory and Practice. JKP, London. p341

Pearce, S., Pickard, H., 2013. How therapeutic communities work: Specific factors related to positive outcome. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 59, 636–645.

Sempik, J., 2008. Green care: A natural resource for therapeutic communities. therapeutic communities 29, 221–227.

Sempik, J., Haigh, R., 2008. Special Edition: Greencare. Therapeutic Communities 29.

Sempik, J., Hine, R., Wilcox, D., 2010. Green Care: A conceptual framework, a report of the working group on the health benefits of green care, EU COST Action.

Thrive, 2014. Making Borders Bloom: pioneering project for borderline personality disorder. Growth Point 14–17.