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Care farming; All in the Mind Awards; Turn-taking in conversation

Claudia Hammond examines how working in nature could play a greater role in improving mental health and hears about the essential role of silences in conversations.

Many people say they feel better when they're out in nature. And some projects deliberately get people involved in conservation, horticulture or farming in order to take advantage of the benefits to health and well-being in the great outdoors. It's known as green care and a new report from Nature England suggests it could play a bigger part in our mental health services. Claudia Hammond visits a Care Farm - Church Farm near Stevenage in Hertfordshire to examine the therapeutic benefits.

In the final candidate for this year's All in the Mind Awards we hear of a care worker who was nominated for making a real difference to a victim of a violent assault succumbing to post traumatic stress disorder but whose life is turning around as a result of seemingly effortless intervention.

For conversations to work we need to take turns to speak and it's something we learn when we're very young and then hone as time goes on. But there are also moments where no one is speaking and it's those lapses in conversation which might give us a clue as to how all this turn-taking takes place with precise millisecond timing. Claudia Hammond speaks to Elliott Hoey, from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, about this research.

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28 minutes

Broadcasts

  • Tue 21 Jun 2016 21:00
  • Wed 22 Jun 2016 15:30

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