Flowers can boost seniors' well-being - Your Life - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2002

Every day, America's senior population--40,000,000 and rising--faces the challenges of growing older, including depression, memory loss, and social withdrawal. As a concerned nation, we are continually exploring new means to ease daily-lee anxieties. A behavioral study by researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, on the health effects of flowers on senior citizens demonstrates that flowers ease depression, inspire social networking, and refresh memory as we age.

"The results are significant be cause, as our nation grows older and life becomes more stressful, we look for easy and natural ways to enhance our lives--and the lives of our aging parents," indicates Jeannette Haviland-Jones, lead researcher and director of the university's Human Development Lab. "Now, one simple answer is right under our noses." More than 100 seniors participated in the study, in which some received flowers and others did not. The results shed new light on how nature's support systems help seniors cope with the challenges of aging:

* Participants showed a significant increase in happiness and positive moods when flowers were present.

* Seniors performed higher on everyday memory tasks and experienced enriched personal memories in the presence of flowers.

* Those who received flowers re-engaged with members of their communities and enlarged their social contacts to include more neighbors, religious support, and even medical personnel.

"Instinct tells us that flowers lift our spirits, but their effects on seniors are especially profound, if not surprising," Haviland-Jones maintains. Specifically, 81% of those who participated in the study showed a reduction in depression following the receipt of flowers; 40% reported broadening their social contacts beyond their normal circle of family and close friends; and 72% of those who received flowers scored very high on memory tests in comparison with seniors who did not get them.