Prescribed: a walk in the park, with friends — and the loneliness lifts for a year

In Barcelona, 320 lonely adults from 12 low-income neighbourhoods were offered a simple prescription: time in nature. Half joined 'Friends in Nature' groups of eight to ten people, meeting for two hours a week over nine weeks to garden, birdwatch and make nature art with trained facilitators; the other half got the same menu of free activities to try alone. Both helped — loneliness scores fell 11% in three months, 12% at six months and 17% after a full year — but the group version helped most the people who started out loneliest and lowest in emotional wellbeing. The trial, part of the European RECETAS project covering 1,200 adults in six cities and published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, is the first large randomised evidence that prescribing nature, together, works — and lasts.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program