Woodland wander – Reflections on the power of walking in nature at Congress 2025

In this blog post Dr Dan Harwood and Dr Katherine Witter reflect on guided nature walks they ran during the 2025 RCPsych International Congress in Newport, Wales.

There are many people writing about the importance of forming closer relationships with nature and how this benefits mental health. But if this is so important, why aren’t we doing it as well as writing about it? Why aren’t more psychiatrists setting up nature-based therapy groups for our colleagues and patients?

I suppose some people prefer talking about things rather than doing them – football being of course the prime example of this! Well, some of us are the opposite, and would rather look at a flower with a patient than talk about how to look at a flower with a patient.

It was with these thoughts in mind that we ran a series of nature walks at the College's International Congress in Newport during summer. By a stroke of luck, the Congress Centre was right next to birdsong filled woodland. Every day of the conference we ran an hour – long walk. The purpose was to give delegates some breathing space, and a chance to talk with each other in a less formal setting. But first and foremost, we wanted them to experience first-hand the therapeutic benefits of a nature-based intervention and to inspire them to go away and deliver similar interventions in their own places of work.

We walked slowly for about half a mile, and every few yards we would stop in a huddle and we would point out an interesting flower, fern, insect or moss that we found. The walkers were encouraged to share their own experiences and ask questions.

What amazed me about our Congress walks was how attentive, engaged and enthusiastic the participants were. Getting outdoors away from your phone enlivens the mind! The delegates shared their own experiences with nature. They asked us lots of practical questions about how to lead walks for patients. And the feedback we got was extraordinarily positive. Indeed, the only negative feedback was that there were too many people on the walk so people at the back couldn’t hear what was being discussed!

I hope what we got across to these everyday psychiatrists, who had come from all over the world, was that a short walk in a wood (or along the pavement, or anywhere in fact) with a few staff or patients focusing on wildlife can be therapeutic and good fun. It does not take much preparation time to walk round your proposed route with an ID guide and learn a little bit about five or six of the plants or trees that you find – and then on the walk you can share your knowledge with a few members of your team or your patients. And as time goes on and you do more walks you will learn more. And anyway, does it really matter if you don't know what every flower is? We certainly don’t! The walks can be collaborative – participants can share their knowledge and help identify wildlife by using field guides, ID books and apps, and take photos and look things up. In fact, this is all part of the fun.

One walk can ignite an interest can lead to more learning, and more learning can lead to greater love and respect for our wild neighbours – and for some, with a bit of support, can lead to active and regular volunteer work, and a new and meaningful relationship with the natural world. We’ve both seen a few patients make that journey. How wonderful that is.

One last point – you do not need a nature reserve to go on a nature walk! Yesterday one of us found a beautiful parrot wax cap fungus on a scrappy bit of grass in a cemetery in South London – and some perennial wall rocket still flowering and growing out of cracks in the pavement. Please don't think that patients need open countryside for nature-based therapy. Looking at the lichen on a wall or identifying the hoverflies in someone's front garden is just as therapeutic as a stroll on a chalk grassland or a National Nature Reserve.

Patients who live in urban settings, a long way from rolling hills and national parks should not be denied access to the natural world by ill-informed myths. Developing a relationship with the nature where you live is crucial, and if everyone took just a few steps to make the small part of the world they call home a better place for nature, we would all be in a much better place.

Dr Katherine Witter
Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist/Sustainability Lead, Hertfordshire Partnership University Partnership Trust

Dr Dan Harwood
Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist/Sustainability Lead, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Chair, PHSC