By 2050 it’s estimated that 70% of people will live in urban areas. Urbanisation has been shown to have an effect on the increase in mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders and depression.
Research in a growing scientific field called ecotherapy has shown a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.
For example, a study found that a walk in the country reduces depression in 71% of participants.
The researchers found that as little as five minutes in a natural setting, whether walking in a park or gardening in the backyard, improves mood, self-esteem, and motivation.’
Another survey by the same research team found that 94% of people with mental illnesses believed that contact with nature put them in a more positive mood.
Nature vs Urban Areas
Reunification – repetitive thoughts that focus on negative emotions. Reunification generally happens when people are under a lot of stress or depressed. When in these states the prefrontal cortex (area of the brain) is highly active.
A walk in nature showed that the activity in the prefrontal cortex was lower than those who walked in an urban setting and the participants self-reported less rumination after walking in nature for 90 minutes, Those who walked in Urban areas for 90 minutes showed no improvements.
A study with Four hundred and ninety-eight healthy volunteers to find out if walking in a forest had any health effects, The study found that Hostility and Depression scores significantly decreased and Liveliness had increased significantly.
What counts as a restorative environment
People exposed to urban environments are forced to use their attention to overcome the effects of constant stimulation and this in turn over time induces cognitive fatigue. In contrast, natural environments benefit from automatically capturing attention while simultaneously eliciting feelings of pleasure.
Natural environments are shown to reduce the demand on executive-based attention, thereby allowing greater restoration of depleted attentional resources in comparison to the perception of urban environments.
Restorative environments give you the feeling of ‘being away’ that is from the daily stressors of life. And time spent in natural environments helps improve performance on tasks that demand a lot of attention.
Interestingly attention restoration effects are also observed after participants simply watch films or photographs that depict natural scene content. The effects of being exposed to nature like attentional capacity, positive emotions, ability to reflect on a life problem etc are more dramatic for actual nature rather than virtual nature.
Restorative environments that make you feel being away don’t necessarily have to be natural. Man-made structures such as monasteries can also be considered restorative environments. However if you stumble across the Cathedral of Barcelona for example, as breath-taking as that is you are still surrounded by things that force your attention rather than just capture it. Whether that has the same attention restorative effects I don’t know. In both natural and Urban settings areas with water, features elicit positive responses.
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Walking is also free physiotherapy you can read about that here
References
- Heart.org, Spend time in nature to reduce stress and anxiety. 2018 https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/spend-time-in-nature-to-reduce-stress-and-anxiety
- Harvard Health Publising, Sour Mood Getting You Down? Get back to nature. Harvard Medical School. 2018. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/sour-mood-getting-you-down-get-back-to-nature
- Taylor S, The Power of Nature: Ecotherapy and Awakening, Physcology Today. 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201204/the-power-nature-ecotherapy-and-awakening
- Bratman GN, Hamilton JP, Hahn KS, et al. Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2015(112);28:8567-8572. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510459112
- Lederbogen F, et al. (2011) City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans. Nature 474(7352):498–501.
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- Sorgon C, Do You Need a Nature Prescription? WebMD, https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/nature-therapy-ecotherapy#1
- E. Morita, S. Fukuda, J. Nagano, N. Hamajima, H. Yamamoto, Y. Iwai, T. Nakashima, H. Ohira, T. Shirakawa, Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction, Public Health Volume 121, Issue 1 2007, Pages 54-63,ISSN 0033-3506, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2006.05.024.
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