In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz shows us how to think about health outside of healthcare, and discover lasting and life-changing medicine in our own communities.
Traditionally, when we get sick, healthcare professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers are starting to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer social prescriptions—referrals to community activities and resources, like art classes, gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. By helping us rediscover our sources of joy, meaning, and relationships, social prescriptions address the root causes of our sicknesses and help us feel better.
The results speak for themselves. Science shows social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and more. Other research finds that social prescribing also helps our healthcare systems—reducing patient wait times, saving money, and even reversing health worker burnout. And as loneliness continues to infect more of us, social prescriptions can help us feel healthier than we felt before we got sick.
From photography courses in the Netherlands to tea-making groups in South Korea, Hotz tours the globe to investigate the revolutionary potential of social prescribing through its five most common categories: nature, movement, art, service, and belonging. We see their prescriptive power personified through a range of healing journeys—a mother prescribed an art workshop for PTSD, a young man prescribed a fishing club for ADHD, a woman prescribed a sea swimming course for depression, a grandmother prescribed farm work for dementia. Their success stories bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health.
As healthcare’s de facto cycle of “diagnose-treat-repeat” reaches a breaking point, Hotz uncovers why social prescribing has spread to more than thirty countries—and continues to grow every day. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can take our health into our own hands and embark on the path to lasting wellness.
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