The Power of "Greening" to Affect Your Mental Health
Turns out life is better when its green
Last week I wrote about “nature deficiency” and how a lack of nature directly in our lives (as in nature we can touch, taste and smell) affects our internal microbiome which controls our physical and mental health. If you missed that one, you can read it HERE.
This week, let’s take a look at “greening” as a specific mental health intervention, and then wrap up with some direct actions you can use to apply this knowledge.
The mental health impact of greening vacant lots
Many studies on our interactions with nature are observational, which is a basic form of doing science. These studies can point us in the right direction, but they rarely give us strong, actionable outcomes.
Alternatively, randomized controlled trials are the gold standard of science. In a rare bit of luck, I came across one such study from Philadelphia where a beautiful randomized controlled study design came together with mental health surveys to show us the power of “greening” (JAMA Network Open 2018).
In this study, the research team was investigated how the physical conditions in neighborhoods were associated with mental health, especially in areas of low socio-economic conditions where mental health rates tend to be much higher than in affluent neighborhoods.
They took 330 vacant lots and divided them into clusters that had one of three treatments:
Control (do nothing = 37 clusters),
Trash Clean Up (remove the trash and debris but limited mowing or maintenance = 36 clusters), and
Greening (removal of trash and debris, grading, planting grass and small trees, building a low fence, and regular maintenance = 37 clusters).
The design was able to control for a number of confounding factors like total area, average distance between the lots, resident population, and the number of serious crimes in each cluster area.
For the greening treatment - imagine a crappy old vacant lot transforming into a lawn, with a tree, and a little fence (the fence was only meant to deter trash dumping and didn’t restrict access to the lot). This compared to just removing trash from a vacant lot, or doing nothing.
Using pre- and post- intervention surveys and a standard community mental health screening tool, the team scored the participants responses. The cool part about this study is that both the survey team and the participants were blind to the treatments. Participants were simply told this was a mental health survey (not that the real study was about the changes to these lots). That means people were not being asked directly about greening or their impressions of nature, and so on.
Of the 342 participants completing both the pre- and post- mental health surveys, the study showed a significant 42% drop in self-reported feelings of depression and a 51% drop in feelings of worthlessness for the greening treatments compared to the control (no treatment). when comparing the greening treatments to the control of no intervention. The trash only interventions showed no significant changes in self-reported mental health compared to the controls.
When the researchers controlled for neighborhoods below the poverty line (annual income below $25k), the drop in feelings of depression was a whopping 69% for those in the greening treatment. Remember that participants were not told that the objective of the study was to assess the impacts of greening, which is what makes this result really jump out.
How can this be?
Other studies have clearly shown a link between lack of green space and worsening mental illness. This study extends that knowledge even further by demonstrating that adding greenspace, can improve mental health in a neighborhood.
Not only are the improved lots visually more appealing and make the neighborhoods feel safer, they also provide the sights, sounds and smells of nature compared to the conditions that existed prior to the greening intervention.
Just imagine the joy and memory triggers that the smell of fresh cut grass can bring. . . . and you start to realize how big the impact of a greenspace can be.
As I wrote about last week, this access to nature can impact us as humans on a microbiome level, changing us from the inside out, and influencing our mental states.
What does this mean for you?
There are two big personal take-aways from this study.
Firstly, at a neighborhood and community level, this study really emphasizes the importance of green spaces where we all live. The wide-spread influence of the greening intervention shows that cleaning up and greening up neighborhoods can have a measurable result on the mental health situation for many people, even those not directly tied to the lot (or space) itself.
Although not a cure-all, supporting these types of initiatives could potentially make a real difference in people’s lives, and improved mental health for individuals which in the end benefits everyone in society, from fewer crimes to less burden on health care.
In this study the average cost of greening the lots was just $1597 per vacant lot and $180 per year for maintenance. That seems pretty darn cheap compared to other mental health interventions.
And secondly, armed with this knowledge, imagine what greening up your personal space can do for your mental health!
The cold weather is sending us all indoors for the next few months. What does your indoor space look like? Any signs of nature there?
Houseplants offer a low cost “greening” intervention for your personal indoor spaces with many of the same benefits as time in nature.
House plants can:
Reduce CO2 levels,
Regulate humidity,
Screen out airborne volatile compounds that negatively impact your health (like formaldehyde and benzene),
Measurably improve your mood and reduce anxiety and stress,
Introduce important microbiome boosting nature-smells through plant and soil volatiles, AND
They can even improve nutrition if you include things like growing microgreens and vegetables indoors under the category of greening your kitchen.
Those are some pretty big wins for the cost of some indoor plants.
To learn more about the specifics of how to actually create these benefits in your home or office - check out the TNH post on The Life-Changing Benefits of Houseplants (with Science and Quick-win Strategies)
Wield the Power of Green
Exposure to nature may one day be a first order prescription for mental and physical recovery and wellbeing.
We evolved out in nature, and then we’ve spent the last few hundred years progressively locking ourselves away from it. Perhaps the shocking increase in significant childhood illness and obesity will ultimately be linked to the combination of poor food and too much time indoors away from nature and sunlight. I suspect some children, and a growing number of adults, are actually starved for nature.
Thinking about nature as a “sense-scape” as opposed to a landscape may help us move more quickly towards using the forces within nature to heal ourselves again.
Do you wield the power of green? Share your favorite nature intervention that works for you every time.
