Thinking Allowed

The power of nature - mental health services for children

2026-01-20 18:40:00

CAMHS Goes Wild! (a child and adolescent mental health service project at Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) has been awarded funding from NHS Charities Together.

Before I go any further, a declaration of interest - our daughter Molly has been pushing for this service for a long time and ran the pilot that this award is based on. Go Molly!

The project has been awarded £150,000 to further their work partnering with Newquay Orchard introducing young people to nature, food production, and healthy lifestyle choices.

"We're so pleased to be awarded this funding. It enables us to deliver a nature-based lifestyle medicine programme. It is co-created and co-delivered with Newquay Orchard. We will be consulting with young people from the start to create meaningful outcomes over the next 2 years." said Molly Jenkins, Clinical Associate Psychologist for Mid Cornwall CAMHS.

It doesn't take long sitting in natural surroundings to notice that living things are very busy at thriving. Plants literally grow over any constraints that humans put in the way of them. Nature is messy. We strongly suspect nature can heal us. There is evidence for it too, but also a call for more research. Here's hoping this work in Cornwall will help support that.

"Findings support the contention that nature positively influences mental health; however, in most cases, additional research with more rigorous study designs and objective measures of both nature and mental health outcomes are needed to confirm statistically significant relationships." Tillmann S, Tobin D, Avison W, Gilliland J. Mental health benefits of interactions with nature in children and teenagers: A systematic review. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2018 Oct 1;72(10):958-66.

Source: cornwallft.nhs.uk

Photo by Olena on Unsplash