Nature Cure, Richard Mabey
Nature Cure: How nature and the imagination can banish depression - Richard Mabey, 244 pages (February 3, 2005), Chatto and Windus
| Title & Author: | Nature Cure Richard Mabey |
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In Nature Cure, Richard Mabey describes his descent into clinical depression, which destroyed his ability to work, play, or sustain relationships with family or friends. He was drinking too much, taking too many pills, and lost all pleasure in the outside world. Nature Cure relates how Richard Mabey gradually regained his happiness.
Richard Mabey had lived his whole life in the Chilterns - tramping over the hills, bird-watching and botanizing. As a man, he purchased a large wood, which he studied in detail over a number of years. But when depression dragged him under the joy that nature gave him was destroyed.
What makes Richard Mabey's story most chilling, perhaps, is that he was living in such a perfect environment, but still succumbed to the deepest melancholy. Many of us dream, someday, of moving somewhere like the Chilterns. But what if such a move not only fails to make us happy, but plunges us into despair. In Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman you can read the research that shows that moving environments, on average, has little impact on our happiness. If you want to be happy change your mind, not your location. But, that as may be, Richard Mabey was totally involved with nature and, therefore, sought a nature cure.
In Nature Cure Richard Mabey describes how he moved to the watery fens and flat open spaces of Norfolk. Slowly, he found his love of nature again in the new environment. At its core Nature Cure is an examination of man's inner relationship with the natural world and how this relationship might ease his suffering.
- Nature Cure: Richard Mabey is an example of how the natural environment can form a backdrop for depression and its cure.