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Health benefits of nature - Coggle Diagram
Health benefits of nature
What is environmental psychology?
Environmental psychology examines the interactions between people and their natural and built environments
BPS Climate and Environmental Action Coordinating Group (CEAC) - supports and advises the implementation of effective climate change and environment work rooted in psychological evidence
SDG 13: Climate action -
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts - the main component is to change people's behaviour
10 million hectares of forest destroyed each year, mainly due to agricultural expansion, with land to feed people through crops and livestock
40,000 species at risk of extinction but biodiversity has been neglected in COVID-19 recovery
World will exceed 1.5 degrees target by 2035 and faces a 2.5 degree warming by 2100
We need deep, rapid and sustained GHG emission reductions by 43% by 2030 and to be net zero by 2050
Impacts all other SDGs
Relationship between SDG 13 and other SDGs
SDG 3 - Ensure healthy lives; good health and wellbeing - climate change induced extreme weather and its impact can have acute mental health impacts
Increase in trauma, shock, PTSD, compound stress, anxiety, depression and substance abuse
Survivors of the California Camp fire have rates of PTSD on par with war veterans (Silveria et al, 2021)
Grief and feelings of loss over property or ways of life
Feeling losing control over one's life events due to disturbances from climate change
Climate change has an impact on people physically and mentally both directly and indirectly
Eco-anxiety - distress caused by climate change (Verplanken et al, 2020) or chronic fear of environmental doom (APA, 2017) - generally treated as non-clinical
Eco-anxiety is an indirect effect of climate change on mental health - pre-traumatic stress disorder, anticipating traumatic consequences and felt before event takes place (Baudon and Jachens, 2021: McBride et al, 2021)
Has a negative impact on mental health - longitudinal study of 13,000+ New Zealand adults found climate concern resulted in a small significant increase in psychological distress, but not life satisfaction across all ages (McBride et al, 2021)
Support - increasing prevalence and need for clinical supports, intervention needed (Baudon and Jachens, 2021)
Emotion focused coping - differentiate distress from personal history and eco-anxiety, and fostering optimism and hope
Problem-focused coping - taking action, joining established groups / organisations for social connection and social support
Connecting with nature
15 - life on land - protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss - interlinked crisis
Relationship between 3, 13 and 15 - climate change and biodiversity loss are linked, as it is a major cause
But nature can reduce climate change, and so both climate change and biodiversity loss threatens human health, and undermines progress towards the vast majority of SDGs
Understanding how nature can impact our health could link public health and nature conservation - by linking both, we improve both and we need to better understand the link as a result
Health benefits of nature - Ulrich, 1984
-> Sample - 46 patients recovering from gallbladder surgery, method of looking at hospital records - those with the view of a tree were taking less painkillers, benefits NHS saving money
Applicable in two areas - clinical health and green care or nature based therapy
Over 40 years of research into health and wellbeing effects of nature- improves mood, attention, fosters sense of connectedness, provides meaning and purpose, supports pro-environmental action - connection to nature
Protecting this SDG helps SDG 3
Physical wellbeing - observable measures of nature views = faster post-surgery recovery time (Ulrich, 1984), nature views = fewer sick days (Moore, 1981) and contact with greenspace associated with better pergnancy outcomes (Dadvand et al, 2019
Self report - more greenspace meant better reported general health and less health complaints (de Vries et al, 2003)
Mental wellbeing - observable - more street trees = fewer antidepressant prescriptions (Taylor et al, 2015; Marselle et al 2020)
Self-report living in a postcode with more green vegetation and more birds associated with reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress (Cox et al, 2017) and greater plant species richness = improved mental health (Methorst et al, 2021)
Social well being - observable - lower crime rates (Kondo et al, 2015 and Weinstein, Balmford et al, 2015)
Self report - group walks and allotment gardens can reduce feelings of loneliness (van den Berg et al, 2010 and Irvine et al, 2022)
11 - Sustainable cities and communities - make cities and human settlements, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable - over 50% of the world's population lives in cities
10 - reduce inequalities - green space can reduce social inequalities in health
How does nature influence health?
How can relationships between nature and health be explained -
Natural environment -> human health - questions about causal mechanisms of the mechanistic pathways are important as it helps inform interventions
Exploring the mechanisms through which the natural environment may bring about change to human health is crucial to understanding both how the effects of the specific nature intervention occurred and how these effects might be replicated by similar nature interventions
Markevych et al, 2017 - conceptual model of the 4 domains that impact health and wellbeing
Greenspace -> reducing harm (mitigation) and exposure to environmental stressors, restoring capacities (restoration) such as attention and psychophysiological stress recovery and building capacities (instoration) -> health and wellbeing
Reducing harm - reducing air pollution, noise pollution and extreme heat
Air pollution - concentrations of this lower in greenspace, vegetation removes air pollutants
Hear stress - vegetation absorbs solar radiation and cooling through transpiration
Noise pollution - vegetation can absorb and diffact noise and green infrastructure can reduce noise levels by 5-10 dB
Restoring capacities - stress recovery and restoring attention
Stress reduction theory - natural environments with certain features facilitate restoration from stress - complexity, water, structure, safe and deflected vistas
Attention restoration theory - environmental settings with certain restorative qualities can facilitate restoration of the ability to direct attention - fascination, extent, being away and compatability
Nature contact can result in improved positive feelings and reduce negative feelings (McMahan and Estes, 2015)
Experimental study in 3 broadleaf forests varying in biodiversity - positive feelings were greatest in the forest with medium biodiversity (Johansson et al, 2014)
Building capacities - physical activity, transcendent experiences, social interaction and cohesion and place attachment / identity
Transcendent experience - awe, humility and self reflection - contribute to we being (Capaldi et al, 2015 and Davis and Gatersleben, 2013)
-> Self reflection increases (Fuller et al, 2007 and Dallimer et al, 2017) - species richness in urban greenspaces were positively associated with self reflection
Sights and sounds of nature, both mundane and awesome, have been found to elicit transcendent experiences (Capaldi et al, 2015, Warber et al, 2015 and Irvine et al 2013, 2019)
Restorative environments
Going into nature is probably among the most widely practised ways of obtaining relief from stress and fatigue
Beveridge (1977) - scenery worked by an unconscious process to produce relaxing and unbending of faculties made tense by the strain, noise and artificial surroundings of urban life
Restoration - experience of a psychological and or physiological recovery process triggered by particular environments and environmental configurations i.e. restorative environments
Exposure to natural environments may contribute to well-being and the prevention of disease and illness
Research guided by stress recovery theory (Ulrich, 1983; Ulrich et al, 1991) and attention restoration theory (Kaplan, 1995)
-> Stress restoration theory - concerned with a situation perceived as demanding or threatening to well-being
Initial response to an environment is one of generalised affect which occurs without conscious recognition or processing
Positive affect - specific environmental features or preferenda are present such as natural content and absence of threats
Quick positive affective responses to features initiates the restorative process as they prevent stress and reduce levels of arousal and negative feelings
If it draws enough interest, more conscious cognitive processing of the environment takes place resulting in a more deliberative restorative experience
Attention restoration theory - restoration from attentional fatigue occurring after prolonged engagement in mentally fatiguing tasks
Emphasises slower, cognitive mechanisms in restoration rather than affect-driven processes
Preference matrix - people have environments they prefer which is intertwined with their restoration
Core assumption - limited capacity to direct attention at uninteresting stimuli - central executive (which controls attention) being depleted with prolonged and intensive use
-> Depletion of this central executive mechanism can result in directed attentional fatigue (DAF)
-> DAF can counter ART
-> Human-environment relationship characterised by 4 qualities
Fascination - ability to pay attention without cognitive effort
Extent - connectedness
Being away
Compatibility between inclinations and the characteristics of the environment
Evolutionary origins of restorative nature experiences -
Biological preparedness to certain environments in evolutionary past that triggered feelings of safety and resources, and thus prompts positive affective interpretation
Research is limited due to samples only being Western undergraduates - not universal
Greenery has always been available - conceptually, why would there need to be a selection process for finding it
Recent theoretical and empitical developments - Perceptual fluency account - integration of both SRT and ART (Joye, 2007)
Natural environments are processed more fluently than urban settings, and this difference in fluency leads to a difference in restorative potential
Perceptually fluent processing of natural stimuli and scenes is thought to occur because the visual brain is more tuned in to the way in which visual information is structured in natural scenes than in built environments
Due to fractal or self-similar patterns - natural scenes have more redundant information, making it easier to process important information
Stress reducing nature of environments could be due to familiarity and safety associated with fluent organisation of stimuli
Attention restoration can be explained by fluent stimuli being lower on fluent cognitive resource demands as there is more place for replenishing attentional resources
Connectedness to nature - people gain purpose through this, and are able to reflect more effectively in natural environments, leading to more restoration
Micro-restorative experiences and instorative effects - brief sensory contact with nature which accumulates over time can lead to increases in wellbeing and provide a buffer to negative and stressful events - especially helpful when stress levels are low, to associate calmness with these environments
-> Ability of those with less stress to simply expose themselves to windows or nature sounds being helped suggests the instorative effects nature can have on those who are not stressed or fatigues
Nature and health - real world application -
Nature and clinical health - use of nature as preventative health care to prevent mental or physical ill health and as a treatment for eco-anxiety
Nature as a prescription or in nature-based therapies - fits into the model of reducing harm, restoring capacities and then building them
Relationship between SDGs 3, 10, 11, 13 and 15
-> Climate solutions are available now, are widespread and support psychological health, by designing cities that people can choose to support and integrate into their daily lives
Increase adoption of active commuting, facilitate use of public transport, green spaces to ensure equal access to everyone, clean energy in private homes and place of business
These climate solutions can help to curb the stress, anxiety and other mental illnesses incurred from the decline of economies, infrastructure and social identity that comes from damage to the climate
What is a healthy city?
nature and public health - relationship between access to green space in the living environment and public health
-> large scale population studies compare the health and wellbeing of people living in green areas to the health and wellbeing of those living in less green areas
Healthy equitable cities - nature can reduce inequalities in health
-> Health inequality - the difference in health across groups of people or places
-> Highest mortality in most people who are the most deprived - gradient is weaker in greener areas
-> Marselle et al, 2020 - sample - 9571 adults (18-79) - method of secondary data analysis, prescribed anti-depressants and based on where they lived looked at street tree data
Found that the less antidepressants were prescribed in those with low socio-economic status when tree density was higher, and it also decreased in other socio-economic groups
Nature can reduce social inequalities in physical and mental health
Inequality gradient clear - low SE status meant more antidepressants - gradient is weaker if those with low SES live close to more street trees
A scoping review of interventions for the treatment of eco-anxiety -
5 major themes for interventions for treating eco-anixety - practitioners inner work and education, fostering client’s inner resilience, encouraging clients to take action, helping clients find social connection and emotional support by joining groups and connecting clients with nature
Recommendations to focus on holistic, multi-pronged and grief-informed approaches that include eco-anxiety focused group work
Baudon, P.; Jachens, L. A Scoping Review of Interventions for the Treatment of Eco-Anxiety. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 9636.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
ijerph18189636
Longitudinal relations between climate change concern and psychological wellbeing - McBride et al, 2021
Mainstream concerns about climate change, more impact on younger people
Climate change predicts a small increase in psychological distress over time, but not in life satisfaction, one year later
No evidence this varies across age
Link between the two, apparent across the lifespan
View through a window may influence recovery from surgery - Ulrich, 1984:
Those who stayed in a room after a surgery that had a window facing a natural setting had shorter postoperative hospital stays, had fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses’ notes and took few potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick wall
All patient rooms should face some kind of nature
Applications and implications -
Evidence based design in healthcare settings - green spaces and restorative elements included in this
Integration of nature into urban environments to increase micro-restoration
Presence of a possible optimal level of exposure to nature - more research needed, but it is implied that the optimal amount could be individual or general between a certain minimum and maximum needed for effective restoration
Also need more research to determine which aspects of nature are most effective - e.g. does it need to be visual and auditory, geometric properties of nature etc