The Secret Garden and the Healing Aspects of Nature

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

You may be familiar with, and have read, the well-loved children’s novel The Secret Garden, published in 1911. For the Shaw Festival of plays in Niagara-on-the-Lake Canada, it was adapted as a musical by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli.

The story begins when a 10-year-old child’s parents died of cholera in India, and she was sent to relatives in England, where there was also a hidden 10-year-old boy who had lost his mother in childbirth.

Related to our time is the portrayal of the varying ways that major trauma and loss can be processed in children and how it can be resolved. There is also the challenge of resolving cross-cultural values in India compared to those in England. We have those treatment situations and cross-cultural communication struggles commonly in psychiatry.

The innovation of this musical, though, is using nature as a character. The love of English gardens—and Shakespeare had one—is present, but hidden away in a secret garden after the mother of the boy fell off a tree branch and died during childbirth. As is not unusual in children, the boy blamed his own birth.

We have come to confirm the healing powers of being in nature during our times of COVID isolation and environmental concerns. I have written a chapter of being a climate activist for the upcoming book on nature therapy (American Psychiatric Association Press). Whether watching a bird building a nest, flowers blooming, or taking a walk in a forest, nature immersion can be healing, and when done with others, a source of connection. Of course, as we have seen with climate instability, nature can also be destructive to humans. Our ultimate goal has to be to keep nature as close as possible to what has sustained human beings and other living things.

In the play, the parentless children are psychologically healed by nature and each other. Being a musical, the healing power of a creative set design and beautiful music is added. Old English songs related to the content have been included and movingly sung. The flowers, as well as the abstracted birds and animals, come to inspiring life. We, too, can benefit by such natural and managed beauty and related music before it is too late. That was also available in Niagara-on-the-Lake with beautiful gardens everywhere and musical concerts to supplement the theatrical performances. Fortunately, we were in the presence of a lover of gardens and her husband, the Stiffmans.

The real secret of any garden is that it goes beyond being beautiful. It can be psychologically healing for the gardener and viewers.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.