Isabel Hardman - The natural health service : what the great outdoors can do for your mind

A vigorous case for nature as the great healer we have overlooked.

Financial Times

Robustly argued... Elation comes in many forms: an unexpected orchid in a Glasgow car park, a shy kingfisher by the Thames, and Penny Black, a headstrong pony in Wimbledon.

Observer

Hardman is a precise, lucid writer, never afraid to offer well-argued opinion but always careful to delineate it from factual reporting The Natural Health Service is rich in interesting and unusual details.

The Critic

A compelling and passionately argued case that healthy bodies and minds need nature.

The Lancet

A really uplifting book. Amid the vivid depictions of depression and PTSD there is a joy in these pages as Isabel explains what the natural world has given to her, and can give to all of us.

Alastair Campbell

Absorbing and life-affirming... Isabels journey of discovery through her own mental illness contains lessons for us all. Simply a must-read.

Rachel Cullen

Extraordinary. I wish everyone with a mental illness, and all those supporting them, would read this book. I believe it could help to revolutionise the way we think about, and even treat, mental health issues.

Jonny Benjamin MBE

Isabel Hardman is a journalist, author and broadcaster. She is Assistant Editor of the Spectator and presents Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4. In 2015 she was named Journalist of the Year at the Political Studies Associations annual awards. She is the author of the bestseller Why We Get the Wrong Politicians which won at the 2018 Parliamentary Book Awards and was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. She is a prominent campaigner on mental health and lives in London.

First published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2020 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

This edition published in 2021.

Copyright Isabel Hardman, 2020

The moral right of Isabel Hardman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 592 1

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 593 8

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House

2627 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

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No one could have predicted the circumstances in which this book was first published. It was supposed to appear on bookshop shelves just as the weather was improving and spring leaves opening. It would be easy for people to put into practice the lessons about getting outdoors regularly to help their mental health.

But instead, the bookshops were closed and people were being told by the government and the police to stay at home to stop the spread of coronavirus. And yet, so many of our experiences in 2020 underlined the central arguments of this book.

While we couldnt see our family or friends, or go into work, or visit non-essential shops, one of the few things most people were still allowed to do, even at the height of lockdown, was get out of the house and do some socially-distanced exercise. The medical experts were adamant that there was an important link between outdoor exercise and wellbeing, both physical and mental. The behavioural psychologists were adamant that the once-daily outdoor exercise would help people stick to other restrictions better. The politicians agreed.

Lockdown was such a strange time that few were able to take a step back and note quite how extraordinary this was. Outdoor exercise had gone from a hobby or something to fill your free time to being an important part of the effort to fight COVID-19. It was no longer a niche luxury, but an essential. Of course, the professionals and patients who I had interviewed for The Natural Health Service already had that attitude, but it was not prevalent in the general population until 2020.

Coronavirus has forced society to change at a speed it isnt normally capable of. Even old-fashioned companies have realised that home working doesnt necessarily mean a plunge in productivity. In the UK, normally thrifty Conservative politicians have discovered a love of spending vast amounts of money. And what might have been a dawning realisation about the value of nature for all of our good health became an epiphany for so many.

In the early days of lockdown, I encouraged people on social media to try connecting with nature in a different way each day, even if they were forced to shield at home. I was struck by how many almost had to retune themselves to a new frequency in order to do so. One day, I suggested looking out of the window and taking a photo of the nearest tree. A number of people responded with photos of trees in their streets that they had never even noticed before, confessing that they had thought it was a shame they had no greenery outside their window, before realising that they had just failed to notice it. Others reported that for the first time in their lives, they were leaving the house every day for a walk. They came to rely on this so much for sanity that they were determined to continue the habit long after COVID-19 was under control.

It wasnt an easy transition, though. In the UK, local authorities panicked and closed parks, and politicians seemed genuinely surprised by the disparity in access to green space between the fortunate and those on low incomes. It was much easier to be locked down with a garden, for instance, but rather harder in a tower block. I watched as this book became an important part of the push for better access to green spaces, and against suggestions, from some quarters, that restrictions be tightened to the extent that people wouldnt be able to go more than 100 metres from their homes, as had been the case in some other European countries.

We now know that life isnt going to go back to the old normal anytime soon. There are many bad things about this, but one good thing is that we have an opportunity to change the way we live and the importance we place on the great outdoors and exercising within it. We shouldnt go back to seeing it as an optional extra in the treatment of mental health problems, or, indeed, as something to pay lip service to when planning towns, homes and workplaces.

The problem is that mental health services are now even more stretched than they were when I started writing The Natural Health Service. People are having to wait longer, for what is often a worse quality of treatment, as a result of the backlog and raised demand caused by the pandemic. Politicians continue to speak worthy words about mental health, but they are still failing to fund it adequately.