Your Doctor Wants You to Make Friends
Imagine this. You go to your GP. You've been feeling low — not clinically depressed, necessarily, but flat. Tired. Disconnected. You spend too many evenings alone. Your social life has quietly evaporated over the past few years, and you're not entirely sure how it happened.
Your doctor listens. Nods. And instead of reaching for the prescription pad, they say: "I'd like to refer you to a link worker. They'll help you find some community activities — maybe a walking group, a gardening project, a community meal. Something to get you connected with other people."
This is social prescribing. And it's not a niche pilot programme or an experimental idea being tested in a few progressive practices. It's happening across the entire NHS, right now, at a scale that's genuinely remarkable.
According to a UCL study led by Professor Daisy Fancourt, published in The Lancet Public Health in September 2025, an estimated 1.3 million people were referred to social prescribing services by their GP in 2023 alone. Since the national roll-out began in 2019 there have been around 5.5 million GP consultations that included a social prescribing referral — far exceeding the original NHS goal of 900,000 people referred over five years by 2023/24.
The NHS is, in the most literal sense, prescribing friendship. And the implications for how we think about health, loneliness, and community are enormous.
What Social Prescribing Actually Is
Social prescribing is an approach that connects people to activities, groups, and services in their community to meet practical, social, and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing. It's not about replacing medical treatment — it's about recognising that many of the things that make people unwell aren't medical problems at all.
Loneliness. Isolation. Financial stress. Bereavement. A lack of purpose after retirement. The slow erosion of social networks that happens when you move to a new town, or your children leave home, or your relationship ends, or your working pattern changes. These aren't conditions that respond well to medication. They respond to connection, purpose, and belonging.
The mechanism is relatively simple, and it is worth being precise about it, because a lot of coverage gets this wrong. A Social Prescribing Link Worker is a non-clinical professional attached to a primary care team. Your GP can refer you to one — but so can a great many other people. NHS England lists referral routes including wider general practice, local authorities, pharmacies, multi-disciplinary teams, hospital discharge teams, allied health professionals, the fire service, police, job centres, social care, housing associations and voluntary-sector organisations. And, in NHS England's own words, "self-referral is also encouraged." You do not have to wait to be sent.
However you get there, the link worker meets with you, has a proper conversation about what's going on in your life, and helps you find community activities and support services that might help.
Those activities might be a walking group. An art class. A gardening project. A cooking group. A choir. A befriending service. A community meal. A volunteering opportunity. The link worker doesn't prescribe a specific activity — they work with you to find something that fits your interests, your circumstances, and your comfort level.
The whole process is person-centred, holistic, and remarkably un-medical. It's healthcare that looks like real life.
The Numbers: Why This Matters
The scale of social prescribing's growth in England is striking. The UCL study analysed primary care records from 1.2 million patients across 1,736 GP practices in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, and found referrals rising steadily year on year since 2019.
More than 3,600 Social Prescribing Link Workers are now in post across England, and the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets a target of 6,500 by the end of the decade and 9,000 by 2036/37.
A NASP survey of more than 400 link workers, carried out in February and March 2025, found that 98% believe their work positively impacts the people they support and 85% would recommend the role to others. Asked where they saw that impact, 97% reported a positive effect on social connection and 95% on mental health.
Perhaps most encouragingly, representation from patients living in more deprived areas rose from 23% before the 2019 national roll-out to 42% in 2023. Social prescribing is reaching the people who need it most.
The original NHS goal was for at least 900,000 people to be referred to social prescribing by 2023/24. The UCL study found 1.3 million people referred by their GP in 2023 alone. Social prescribing isn't a trial. It's a transformation.
What's Being Prescribed
When people hear "social prescribing," they often imagine something vaguely therapeutic — perhaps a counselling session or a structured programme. The reality is far more ordinary, and far more interesting.
Here's a sample of what link workers across England are connecting people with:
Walking groups. One of the most commonly prescribed activities. Regular, gentle, outdoors, free. The conversation happens naturally as you walk side by side, which research shows is less confrontational and more conducive to openness than sitting face to face.
Gardening and allotment projects. Community gardens are social prescribing gold. They give people a reason to turn up regularly, a tangible sense of achievement, and a connection to both nature and other people. Devon has an abundance of these.
Art and creative classes. Painting, pottery, creative writing, photography. The creative element gives people something to focus on other than their anxiety about being in a group, which makes these activities particularly effective for people with social anxiety or low confidence.
Community meals. This is where it gets really interesting. Charities like FoodCycle bring people together to share a cooked meal, and their door policy is the whole point: "Everyone is welcome at FoodCycle. Whatever your reason for needing a meal, you are welcome to join us." No referral, no eligibility test. Volunteers cook, everyone eats, conversations happen. People are, in effect, being prescribed dinner.
Singing and choir groups. Singing together synchronises breathing, and group singing is a well-established route to a sense of collective identity. It is one of the activities link workers reach for most readily.
Befriending services. For people who aren't ready for a group activity, link workers might connect them with a befriending service — someone who'll visit regularly for a cup of tea and a conversation. It sounds simple because it is. And it works.
Volunteering. Helping others is one of the most effective treatments for the kind of purposelessness that often underlies low mood. Link workers frequently connect people with local volunteering opportunities, which serve double duty: they give the person a role and a routine, and they benefit the wider community.
Social Prescribing in Devon
Devon has been at the forefront of social prescribing, and the flagship programme is Wellbeing Exeter.
Wellbeing Exeter works through Community Connectors, who meet people one to one, help them work out what they want to change, and connect them with local support. It has worked with thousands of residents across Exeter and Cranbrook.
The important practical detail is who can put you in touch. You do not need a GP. Wellbeing Exeter takes referrals from health professionals and from people working in the voluntary sector, social care and higher education — and it takes self-referrals. The conditions are simply that you are an adult aged 18 or over, that you live in Exeter, that you are not already registered with them, and that you are ready to work with a Community Connector. Their referral page is at wellbeingexeter.org.uk/refer, and the office number is 01392 284271.
The programme also employs Community Builders — people who work at a neighbourhood level to strengthen the social fabric, creating new groups and activities based on what local residents actually want. It's not top-down prescription; it's bottom-up community development, supported by the health system.
Beyond Wellbeing Exeter, the Devon Integrated Care System commissioned the University of Plymouth in 2019 to evaluate social prescribing across its footprint, and the ICB publishes its current social prescribing information at onedevon.org.uk. Social prescribing in Devon isn't just available — it's embedded in how healthcare works.
If you're interested in the broader relationship between social connection and mental health, our piece on the mental health benefits of a regular social calendar digs into the research on why consistent social contact is so protective. And if you're new to Exeter and looking to build connections, our guide to the best gyms, yoga studios, and fitness classes covers spaces where friendships form naturally.
The NHS Is Literally Prescribing Friendship
Let's sit with that for a moment. The National Health Service — one of the largest and most complex healthcare systems in the world — has concluded that for a significant proportion of the people who walk through GP doors, the most effective intervention isn't a drug or a procedure or a referral to a specialist. It's connection. Community. Friendship.
This is a profound shift in how we think about health. For decades, the medical model has treated the body as a machine to be fixed. Social prescribing acknowledges something that most of us know intuitively but that the healthcare system has been slow to formalise: that health is social. That the mortality effect of chronic loneliness has been benchmarked against smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day — a comparison of effect sizes, not a claim that loneliness does what smoking does. That the things that make us well — purpose, belonging, routine, being known — are not things that come in pill form.
The fact that GPs are now routinely asking about social isolation alongside blood pressure and cholesterol is remarkable. The fact that the NHS employs thousands of people whose entire job is to help patients find friends and activities is, frankly, revolutionary. And the fact that it's working — that social prescribing is reducing GP visits, improving mental health outcomes, and reconnecting people with their communities — should make us rethink what "healthcare" actually means.
Why Community Meals Are the Perfect Social Prescription
Of all the activities being prescribed by link workers, community meals deserve particular attention. Because eating together is not just a practical solution to isolation — it's one of the oldest and most effective mechanisms for social bonding that humans have.
Anthropological research consistently shows that shared meals are the foundation of social cohesion in every human culture. When we eat together, we synchronise our behaviour. We share resources. We make ourselves vulnerable — choosing what to eat in front of others, navigating the small intimacies of table manners and conversation. The meal creates a structure within which relationships can develop naturally, without the pressure of organised "networking" or forced socialising.
FoodCycle's model demonstrates this beautifully. Their community meals bring together people from all backgrounds — some referred through social prescribing, some walking in off the street — around a table of hot food cooked by volunteers. No one asks why you're there. No one assesses your eligibility. You just eat, and you talk, and you come back next week.
This is exactly the principle behind what we do at Dinners With Friends. The dinner table is the oldest social technology we have. It removes the awkwardness of eye contact by giving you something to look at. It removes the pressure of conversation by giving you something to do. It provides a beginning, a middle, and an end — a natural arc that makes the social interaction feel manageable rather than open-ended.
When the NHS prescribes a community meal, they're not just addressing hunger or nutrition. They're prescribing the conditions under which friendship happens.
What This Means for the Rest of Us
Social prescribing, at its heart, is a recognition that the things many of us are missing — community, connection, purpose — are not luxuries. They're health necessities. And while the formal programme runs through link workers, the underlying insight applies to everyone.
If you've been feeling flat, disconnected, or just a bit less yourself than you'd like to be, the prescription might not be complicated. It might be: join a group. Show up regularly. Eat with other people. Walk with other people. Make something with other people. Be in a room with humans who are doing the same thing you're doing, week after week, until the nods become conversations and the conversations become friendships.
You don't need anyone's permission for that. You just need to decide to do it — and if you would like a link worker's help doing it, you can ask at your GP surgery, or self-refer.
Devon, and Exeter in particular, is unusually well-served with community activities and groups. From the walking groups on Dartmoor to the meditation circles in the city centre, from the cooking classes in Topsham to the volunteering opportunities with local charities, the infrastructure for social connection exists. It's just waiting for you to step into it.
If the idea of social prescribing resonates with you but you're not sure where to start, our guide to the best UK wellness apps for a calmer social life includes tools for finding local groups and activities. And if you're curious about the broader science of why cold, challenging experiences bond people together, our piece on cold water therapy and connection in Devon explores a surprisingly social wellness trend.
The Dinner Table as Healthcare
There's a beautiful irony in the fact that the most advanced healthcare system in the world is circling back to the most ancient form of medicine: human connection. The link workers, the Community Connectors, the community dining projects — they're all doing what humans have always done for each other. They're saying: come, sit down, eat something, tell me what's going on.
Social prescribing isn't a trend. It's a correction. It's the healthcare system catching up with what the rest of us have always known — that the best thing for a person who's struggling is usually another person.
If you're reading this and recognising something of yourself — the quiet withdrawal, the cancelled plans, the evenings spent scrolling instead of connecting — know that you're not unusual. Millions of people in England are in the same position. And the NHS has built an entire infrastructure to help.
But you don't have to wait to be referred. You can ask for a link worker yourself — self-referral is encouraged — and you can prescribe yourself in the meantime. A walk. A class. A meal with people you don't know yet but might come to care about.
Start with dinner. It's worked for thousands of years.