People Who Live In Contact With Nature Have Better Mental Health
Since awareness of the importance of preserving nature has spread throughout the world, so has the idea that being in contact with natural environments is healthy. The contemplative life associated with walks through the forest and resting under the trees. However, it is one thing to believe that walks in nature are subjectively pleasant, and another to believe that they can have objective effects on our health and well-being.
A recent publication in the journal Nature sheds some light on the matter. According to their conclusions, Walks through natural spaces away from human influence are associated with better mental and physical health as long as they are long enough.
The study, based on questionnaires, included questions related to the frequency of visits to natural environments and their quality (more or less removed from human intervention), as well as four dimensions of health: mental health, social cohesion, physical activity and blood pressure. These four dimensions have been linked to findings from previous studies similar to this one, and the aim was to check if similar results could be obtained.
Regarding the sample used, The group of people studied was made up of 1,538 individuals residing in the Australian city of Brisbane
A clear improvement in our happiness
The results reveal that people who walk alone more in wild environments show a lower tendency to present depression and hypertension (a risk factor for heart disease), in addition to suffering less stress. People who came into contact with nature more frequently also had a significantly higher level of social cohesion.
However, The benefits associated with mental health and blood pressure are revealed as long as the duration of nature walks is long enough Thus, the possible benefits of wandering in virgin areas would be obtained with doses of at least half an hour of walking through nature, and not less. The frequency of these walks could be at least weekly, and could be done in large parks in which to momentarily escape the urban environment that surrounds them.
How is this explained?
This is not the first study to link contact with nature and psychological benefits. For example, research relates the integration of schools in green spaces with better academic performance of their students. However, It is important to note that this study is not based on an experiment, and is only limited to presenting correlations between variables
Among the ideas proposed by the members of the research team is that if everyone visited a park for half an hour once a week, Cases of depression could be reduced by 7%, but the truth is that this is not certain People who walk through natural areas show less depression, but this does not have to mean that these walks are the ones that produce these improvements: perhaps there is some still unknown factor that is usually present in people who carry out this activity and that is which produces the good mental and physical state that has been found in this study. Correlation does not imply causation.
However, there are also explanations about possible mechanisms by which these walks may directly improve people’s living standards. Among them, the fact that In natural areas the air is of better quality and is less polluted, that wild areas have more slopes and crossing them requires more physical activity, protection from the sun in shady areas. All this would translate into better health, related to the appearance of mental disorders.
These possibilities make the conclusions of this study relevant for programs aimed at preventing diseases and reducing their prevalence. Considering how cheap it is to walk through parks, It is worth it for both us individually and health institutions to give this option a chance
