Published: April 28, 2022 Last Updated: May 14, 2025
To beat social isolation is one of the most important topics we can cover this year. Coming out from the 2022 global pandemic, everyone saw how important social interactions and social connections were. In this article, allow me to share with you my ideas on how to fight social isolation. Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
What Is Social Isolation
Social isolation is a metric, that is, a measure. It is the measure of the number of contacts that a person has. Some people can choose to have many contacts while others may choose to have just a few contacts. This is simply a count of the number of contacts and does not take into account the quality of those contacts. These are people you interact with on a somewhat regular frequency.
Social Isolation And Mental Health
Human beings are designed to be social creatures by nature. Babies must depend on their mothers for physical and emotional sustenance. Children thrive when raise in a happy and well adjusted home. Social isolation can negatively impact a person’s mental health if a person is cut off from his or her social network. The person who is cut off might experience loneliness. The intensity and length of time the person experiences loneliness might lead to feelings of depression.
Risk Factors of Social Isolation
You can be at-risk of social isolation and subsequent mental health challenges if you experience any of the following:
- You’re a person above 65 living on your own
- Have a small number of contacts that are all superficial in nature
- Don’t maintain close ties to your family members
- Don’t belong to any clubs or social groups or gaming groups
- Have trouble connecting with people due to trust issues from past sexual or physical abuse
- Recently divorced or widowed after a long marriage
- Have a terrible attitude which repels people around you
- Are a member of a visible minority group living in a non-diverse area
- A new immigrant or refugee to a new country
- Have a disability or long-term health challenges
- Have difficulty understanding the language or customs of the people where you live
- Don’t have extra money to go on social outings
- Experiencing poverty or at-risk of homelessness
If you have one or more of the factors on the list above, you might find yourself at a higher than normal risk of experience social isolation and the subsequent negative mental health issues such as loneliness, depression, and more.
Gardening To The Rescue
Many other mental health professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other will give you all different kinds of advice and strategies for fighting your social isolation. These professionals probably have lots of great ideas and strategies based on their years of education. Seeing that we are a site about gardening, I’m going to share with you advice that is gardening related because you can get other information from them. Remember, if you are experiencing serious mental health issues, get yourself to a counsellor who can help you work through the things which are troubling you.
Gardening Is Socialized Out of Culture
Gardening is one of those things which we can all do but because sadly the current modern culture has socialized gardening out of our normal daily activities. Thus most people find gardening unappealing. Yet, it has many benefits for humans on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level.
Gardening Connects You To Earth
When you’re isolated and feeling down, being out in the gardenhome garden A designated area around a residential property where individuals cultivate plants, fruits, vegetables, or ornamental plants for personal use. It comprises a farming system that combines physical, social, and economic functions on the area of land around a family home, providing a sustainable source of food and other benefits for the household, extended family, and friends. working with you hands touching the soil, the plants, and the fruits can connect you with the earth. Feelings create hormonal as well as bio-electrical traces in the human body. By working with and in your soil and your garden, you allow negative ions to flow back into the earth away from you. You’re grounding your body physically which will help to increase your positive mood thus fighting the impact of social isolation.
Gardening Connects You To Plants
When you go out in the garden, you can connect with your plants. You can talk to your plants. Lol. Now before you laugh at the idea too hard, remember that even the saviour spoke to a plant in the new testament. He said a bad word to it and it died. You can speak positive words to your plants or even sing to them as you work in your garden. I know people who sing to their plants. I have heard of people praying in their garden among their plants.
Gardening Gets You Outdoors
When you’re locked up in your house all day and night and staring at the walls, it’s natural to feel social isolation and depressed after a while. Getting out into your garden gets you exposure to sunlight which is good for you. It gets you out for fresh air which is good for you.
Encouraged By Holistic Healers For Hundreds of Years
Social isolation is a relative new aliment on the scene. However gardening has been encouraged by holistic healers to promote health for hundreds of years. When you are unwell, you could spend time outside sitting on the grass next to a flower bed. Gentle tilling of the soil with a hoe can help build up muscles and joints. A beautiful assortment of flowers will stimulate the eyes with its beauty and the nose with the lovely aroma.
Even in April of 2022, it was reported that a Catholic highschool, École secondaire catholique Franco-Cité, built a living wallPlant Wall A plant wall is a wall space which contains many plants or shrubs. This wall can be arranged in any number of ways depending on the desired effect. This design is a return to the classic indoor jungle aesthetic of the 1970's combined with an interest in biophilic design. With a rich variety of textures, colours, shades, and air purification benefits, it is a trend that has huge growth potential. Other names: Living Wall in its foyer to help staff, students, and faculty suffering mental health fatigue from the pandemic. “During the pandemic we had the discussion because we wanted to find ways to engage the students and the school at a time when everything was falling apart and the students, their mental health was not well, so that’s one of the things we wanted to put in place for them,” said Eric Gendron, Franco-Cité principal.
People instinctively know the power of beautiful plants to make you feel better about yourself, and the world around you. The teachers at the school were inspired by living walls they had seen in Ottawa. “Inspired by some living walls they had seen in the Ottawa region, they reached out to Wallemi, a company based out of Rockland, to come up with an idea that would work best for Franco-Cité.”
The students who worked with their teachers to build the living wall of plants all had a wonderful time. Below is an example of a living wall.
Gardens Are A Non-Threatening Connection Point
These days people feel threatened by many things. There is fear of racism. There is fear of violence There is fear of war impacting the rest of us. There is fear of future pandemics. There is fear of connecting with one another. The humble plants in your garden are non-threatening. They are just there for your pleasure and enjoyment and if you plant food, they are there for your belly too! You can and should connect with your plants and start gardening.
If you are not sure where to begin, how about grabbing our PDF when you join our email list. It is a thank-you gift for joining our online email community. Plus you make another connection point. If you’re already a subscriber, then how about checking out the article, Easiest Plant for the Novice Gardener.
No Space No Problem
Maybe you’re now excited to get growing but you don’t have space. What if you live in an apartment with no backyard. What can you do? Plant some flowers in containers. You can even plant veggies in containers too. You can read our article about Growing Potatoes in Bags. Do you like mint? I love mint. You can read about how to Grow Mint from Cuttings. You can grow them in little containers in your apartment and they smell great!
Conclusion
In this article, I wanted to bring to mind the topic of social isolation and mental health and offer you a plant-based idea to help you and those you love. Mental health awareness week is May 9 to 15, 2022. Remember that mental health issues are real issues too even if you don’t see them on the outside. Your plants can be your friends too. Share this article with friends to get the word out. Until next time, continue to learn and grow.
References
https://www.nia.nih.gov/ctctoolkit
https://www.dhs.gov/employee-resources/news/01/25/how-deal-loneliness-and-social-isolation
