The Efficacy of Horticultural Therapy Interventions Based on Mental Health Indicators in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Scoping Review

With the rapid development of urbanization and the global acceleration of the aging population, the scale of community-dwelling older adults in urban communities is constantly expanding. The mental health problems of community-dwelling older adults are getting more and more attention. Horticultural therapy (HT) has been widely used as a mental health intervention for the elderly, but a recent and comprehensive synthesis of available evidence on outcomes is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of horticultural therapy interventions for community-dwelling older adults and to evaluate and summarize the methods and findings of relevant studies through a systematic review. Through a search and screening of national and international literature databases, 20 studies that met the criteria were finally included in this paper. The results showed that HT can significantly improve the mental health status of older adults, especially for depression, anxiety and self-esteem. In addition, this study is expected to assist researchers and others to select appropriate intervention methods, time, frequency and research methods according to different experimental purposes, pay attention to the influence of these factors, and accurately reflect the intervention effect through physiological or psychological measurement methods, to benefit more community-dwelling older adults.