Social prescribing (also known as community referral) is when doctorsprescribe something for a person which is not a drug. They are most likely to do this if the persons problems are more social than medical. [1] The idea has caught on in the National Health Service, in Ireland[2] and the Netherlands[3]
All sorts of things can be prescribed in this way. Most common is to help them join a local social group. In London in 2022 general practitioners started prescribing fruit and vegetables to test if that helped people. [4]