More Study Information

Outdoor swimming as a nature-based social prescribed intervention for depression

Many people say outdoor swimming improves their mental health. There has been some research showing outdoor swimming helps people with depression, but not enough to say for certain.

Social prescribing link workers work with GPs to support individuals to take greater control of their own health. They link patients with community-based activities and non-medical support e.g. gardening, volunteering opportunities or exercise and sports groups.

In this study, we want social prescribing link workers to link adults with depression with an outdoor swim course to see if it can help them.

Aim

This study is a small study called a feasibility study. It will help us to decide if we can go on to run a larger clinical trial and, if so, how best to design it. The larger clinical trial would tell us if outdoor swimming does help improve depression. It will also give us information about who and how it might help.

Design and Methods

Social prescribing link workers will give information about this research study to people they think it might help. Individuals who decide to take part will either go on an 8-week outdoor swimming course, as well as their usual care, or have their usual care only. Usual care may include talking therapies and/or antidepressant medications and community activities. The usual care-only group will be offered the swimming course after the study finishes. The outdoor swimming courses will be run by experienced coaches and will build confidence and water safety skills.

During the study, participants will fill out questionnaires that ask about their depression, mental health, wellbeing, and use of health care services. Participants will complete them before the study starts, immediately after the swimming course (or usual care) and 8 weeks later. We will also get feedback from participants, swimming coaches, social prescribing link workers as well as people who declined or dropped out of the study. Their feedback will help us design the full trial.

Patient and Public involvement (PPI)

We have had three PPI meetings to help us plan this study. They have included people with depression, from diverse backgrounds and people who have found swimming helpful. Two members of our research team are PPI co-applicants and we have 3 PPI members on an independent panel that help oversee the study. During the study we will also meet six times with a PPI group who will help us with planning how we should advertise the study, remove barriers to participation and communicate the findings to the public.

Dissemination

The results will be shared with participants and published in a science journal. A short film and podcast will also be made to spark interest in the larger trial.