Garden therapy: planting pines at the Return Centre

Garden therapy: how planting pines helps the people who rescue others.

Psychologists and medical workers hold an “inner front” every day, helping others recover, cope with stress, and find support. But where do the specialists themselves find strength?

At the Return Centre for Mental Health in Lutsk there was a garden-therapy session: participants planted young pines. The aim was to prevent professional burnout.

Garden therapy is not only work with soil. It is a tool for psychological recovery. Contact with living nature helps lower stress and emotional burnout, come back to the ground and to inner calm, and feel a visible result of one’s work — the start of a new life.

Each planted tree became a symbol of resilience, recovery, and hope. Thank you to our colleagues for taking part, for warm conversations, and for the shared work.

The Volyn Regional Psychiatric Hospital and the psychological support service of the National Police in Volyn Oblast were there as well.