Green spaces are associated with mental health

Podcast text: Local green spaces are linked to mental health

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Helen Saul: Welcome to this podcast from the NIHR about the impact of green spaces on our mental health. Living near green and blue spaces, such as parks, lakes, or beaches, is associated with better mental health. But exactly why is unclear. These places themselves may reduce stress levels, encourage exercise and socializing, and improve air quality. Or it could be that the people living in these areas are richer and therefore healthier than others in the community.

Today we will discuss a major study that aims to address these effects.

My name is Helen Saul, and I am the editor-in-chief of the NIHR Evidence website. I’m talking to author Professor Sarah Rodgers. Perhaps you would like to introduce yourself, Sarah.

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Sarah Rodgers: Hello, Helen! So, as you said, I’m a Professor of public health at the University of Liverpool, and I have a background in geography and epidemiology. So, I thought that this course seemed to be a good fit for me and my background, thinking about how the environment affects health.

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Helen Saul: Obviously, there is previous research on green spaces and mental health. Why was this study necessary?

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Sarah Rodgers: The studies that were there mainly had small groups of people, so, a few 100 or 1,000 and changes were analyzed in a short time. And they didn’t focus much on socioeconomic inequality. And because the studies were of different levels, we are not sure if the individual’s health caused them to move to a different area because of their overall health opportunities. beautiful, for example, and wanting to, you know, live in the middle of an urban city where they didn’t want to be, or they were able to go to a green and beautiful place that already exists.

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Helen Saul: So how did you deal with this in your teaching?

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Sarah Rodgers: Yes, yes. Thus, the way we designed our current study allowed us to be sure that exposure to the green or blue area preceded the outcome, so we could clearly examine whether green or blue areas prevent illness. And I think that was a very good development. So, what we’ve been able to do is use family links from people’s homes and link the environment around their home to their biographies. So, at this point we’re linked to GP records in Wales for about 2 million people. So, we wanted their health status over time, monthly or quarterly, we can do that. And then this contained anonymous data, which means that all identifiers, so their names and addresses were removed. So, researchers get data without knowing who the person is or where they live.

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Helen Saul: And you looked at people’s proximity to home and their access to green spaces?

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Sarah Rodgers: Yes, that’s right. Therefore, we thought that if we looked a short distance from home, and we looked at the green, we called the green around the home, within 2 or 300 meters, people would I saw this at their door, so they wouldn’t have to make any effort to get the benefits from it, it would just be there. But we also looked at their entrance about a mile from home. So in that situation, it’s their kind of opportunity to find those green areas because we didn’t know for sure if they would have visited that area at that time.

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Helen Saul: So, what did you find? How did these two measures relate to mental health?

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Sarah Rodgers: That was very interesting. We found a strong connection with the existing green. So, when we looked at health data collected for over 2 million adults, we found that people’s home environments and their ability to access green or blue spaces are associated with a decrease in anxiety or depression they reported to their general practitioner.

So, having as much greenery as possible from their front door reduced their chances of anxiety or depression by 20%. So, they were one-fifth less likely to need to go to their doctor for help. Then we saw some reduction, a small reduction, but still a 7% reduction in terms of access to these green or blue areas within a long distance from home. So, for every 360 meters to their nearest point, there was a 7% chance of experiencing a common mental health problem, anxiety or depression emotional.

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Helen Saul: And were the results different for people who had a mental health screening in the past and those who didn’t?

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Sarah Rodgers: Yes, so they were different, we wanted to do, to look back at people, first, who had experienced anxiety and depression in the past to see what effects this had. And we found that adults who had been diagnosed up to 8 years earlier had an even lower chance of having a common mental disorder. So, this was a low of 32%, compared to 16% for those who did not have that previous history test.

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Helen Saul: It’s a big difference in, maybe, vulnerable people.

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Sarah Rodgers: Yes, yes, that’s a big difference, and we think that this is a big improvement because of the way of organizing the data, and how we were able to use all that data correctly to be able to look at them. their health status and to see if their previous exposure to green or blue areas had a potential impact on their health status.

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Helen Saul: You are also looking at different population groups. What groups have you found that can benefit from a green environment and find the best opportunity?

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Sarah Rodgers: So, we looked at different stratifications of need. So, what we found is that there was an association between common mental health problems and access to green space. For adults living in the poorest areas, that was a 10% reduction. And that was a stronger association than those living in low-income areas who saw a 6% reduction. So that shows that there are huge benefits, huge mental health benefits for people who live in deprived areas that have a lot of green or blue areas. So, they had, you know less resources in general, but they had these green or blue areas that they were taking, maybe, taking another good opportunity to see.

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Helen Saul: It is very interesting that people who need it benefited a lot.

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Sarah Rodgers: Yes, indeed, it is very interesting to see those trends in terms of deprivation and inequality, and to know that there is an opportunity to have good places that make an impact on people who need these places the most.

What I am trying to do now is to work with local government and different stakeholders. So, while they are designing new areas, we are trying to see how we can help our local government to engage with the local community, to strengthen the local community, to organize those areas together with the people who need them the most. , and maybe even designing places with those people in mind, those people themselves.

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And that’s what we’re doing with this new UK Prevention Research Partnership called Groundswell that I’m involved with. So, we’re taking the data step one and looking down and working with the people who are designing those spaces. Therefore, I think that the outcome of the NIHR project that we were funded is a very good foundation, and it helps us now to work on the ground with people in this co-design phase.

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Helen Saul: Well, we would like to wish you the best of luck with that important work, Sarah, and thank you very much for being with me today and for your explanation of the wonderful lesson.

This is part of the NIHR podcast, I’m Helen Saul, and thanks for listening. If you have any thoughts or comments about this or any other section, please contact us at evidence@nihr.ac.uk, and visit our website, evidence.nihr.ac.uk.

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