豊田 正博

© 2020, American Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved. In modern society, stress reduction in the workplace is a pressing issue. Although many studies have been done on the psychological and physiological effects of indoor plants, the majority of them have been conducted in laboratory or quasi-office settings. The objective of this study was to verify the stress reduction effects of the presence of small indoor plants on employees in a real office setting. We investigated the changes in psychological and physiological stress before and after placing a plant on a worker’s desk. Sixty-three office workers at an electric company in Japan were the participants of this study. The participants were directed to take a 3-minute rest while sitting at their desk when they felt fatigue. There were two phases of the study: a control period without plants and an intervention period when the participants were able to see and care for a small plant. We measured psychological stress in the participants using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). As an index of physiological stress, the participants measured their own pulse rate throughout the study. STAI scores decreased significantly after the intervention period (P < 0.05). The ratio of the participants whose pulse rate lowered significantly after a 3-minute rest increased significantly during the intervention period (P < 0.05). Our study indicates that having opportunities to gaze intentionally at nearby plants on a daily basis in the work environment can reduce the psychological and physiological stress of office workers.

© 2016, International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved. The objective of this study was to seek effective and age-appropriate gardening activities for activation of the prefrontal area. Participants were divided into two groups of 54 younger adults (age range 20-59) and 23 older adults (age range 60-88). We measured and compared relative values of oxyhemoglobin concentration in the prefrontal area in both groups during five typical gardening tasks and a control task by using near-infrared spectroscopy. We selected five tasks of seeding, thinning, planting, weeding and watering as typical gardening tasks and a motor programming task of the Frontal Assessment Battery as a control task. In younger adults, activation during all of the gardening tasks was similar to, or greater than that of the control task. In older adults, greater activation was observed during the seeding task and the watering task compared to the control task. These results suggest that gardening activities including shifting attention, fine motor skill, and attentional allocation such as seeding and watering have potential to be effective for prevention or delay of cognitive decline from the view point of non-pharmacological approaches.

This study was to determine the level of frailty risk and to clarify its related factors among the community-dwelling Japanese elderly women. The participants were 120 (aged 73.2±4.3) elderly women who lived in Himeji City, Hyogo, Japan. We distributed a questionnaire including age, family structure, self-rated health, short version of Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), lifestyle behaviors (hobbies, gardening, walking, sports activities etc.), and frailty checklist (homeboundedness, falls and poor nutrition), and also measured height, body weight, body mass index and physical fitness tests (grip strength, walking speed, standing on one leg with eyes open). We carried out a survey in November and December 2010. Selected variables were compared after dividing the participants into Frailty high risk group (HR) and low risk group (LR). The number of HR was 19 (15.8%). HR had significantly higher age (P<0.05) and GDS score (P<0.01), and lower frequency of walking and shorter time of standing on one leg with eyes open (P<0.05, respectively) than those of LR. From the results of multiple logistic regression analysis using the step-wise method, there was a significant relationship between HR and high score of GDS (Odds ratio: 1.239, 95%CI: 1.029-1.492) and low frequency of walking (Odds ratio: 3.405, 95%CI: 1.116-10.389), adjusted for age and standing on one leg with eyes open. This study found that walking activity and mental health status were predictive of frailty risk in the community-dwelling elderly women and that these associations were independent of related factors. © 2012 TSI Press.

We tried horticultural therapy on the users of the Aged People day-care facility once a week for three months. As a new approach of assessment, we used the original assessment sheet (Awaji horticultural therapy assessment sheet : AHTAS) and examined the practical utility of AHTAS and the relation between AHTAS and the existing measures for evaluation ; QOL-D, MMSE, Vitality Index etc. AHTAS contains 10 questions. Items include 6 questions on mental issues, 3 questions on motivation issues and the remaining question on the issue of communication. All things considered AHTAS assesses the quality of life. After three months horticultural therapy we analyzed the data and recognized that the reliability and the ease of use of AHTAS resulted in a strong correlation between AHTAS and existing measures for evaluation. Our new horticultural therapy assessment method for the elderly using AHTAS and the existing measures for evaluation could give an objective assessment of horticultural therapy for the elderly that are experiencing problems with their quality of life, mental function, motivation and their communication ability. This study has also indicated that the use of only AHTAS could still assess motivation, mental function, communication faculty and the quality of life.