Mental health issues are a growing concern in today’s modern world. Around 450 million people suffer from mental illness of some kind, but only one in three of those people actively seek treatment. We do know that interaction with nature provides benefits for mental health and being around nature has been shown to have a positive effect on those suffering form anxiety, depression and stress. Formal ecotherapy programs are on the rise – but in our increasingly urbanised world, how can we help people find the benefits of nature on their own doorsteps?
”If the evidence shows that nature contact helps to buffer against negative impacts from other environmental predictors of health, then access to these landscapes can be considered a matter of environmental justice,” says Greg Bratman, lead author of the research and assistant professor at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. He adds that he hopes that the framework could eventually be used address health disparities across diverse communities.
The study involved the co-operation of more than two dozen experts in health, social care and environmental science, taking a cross-disciplinary approach towards the mental health benefits of the natural environment. To implement the study’s recommended conceptual framework would requite a shift of thinking across the urban planning environment. However, as a 2016 study published in the Lancet shows, mental health problems make up by far the leading burden of global disease [5]. If something as relatively simple as better urban planning can help to reduce that burden – and bring added environmental and physical health benefits too – then surely, it’s a shift of thinking which must be made.
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