Green is
Good for Your Mental Health
Hello
Everyone,
More and
more people are living in highly urbanised enironments. Living away from nature does seem to have an
impact on health. Environmental
psychologists are backing their advocacy of natural environments with research. One biologist E.O. Wilson refers to his
hypothesis of 'biophilia': because humans have lived most of their lives in
nature they have an innate need to associate with other living things. Living separate to nature is relatively new
in evolutionary terms.
10,000
people were tracked by the Exeter Medical School for 17 years to 2008 on their
mental health. Their research and other Canadian
studies concluded that people who moved to greener environments felt an
immediate improvement in their mental health.
The interesting point is that this boost could still be measured three
years later. Contact with nature seems
to improve concentration and speeds recovery from illness. Even plants in the workplace or a view to
nature seems to reduce the amount of sick leave.
Dr Jeremy
Dean from the PsyBlog site estimates that people now spend 25% less time in
nature than what they did 20 years ago... Surfing the internet and playing video games have replaced much outdoor time.
It looks like
we need some green space for our mental health.
How can you bring more of nature into your everyday life?
To read more
of these ideas see Roz's latest books Future
Words and Love Well available on
Amazon.
Source: 'A
Walk in the Bush is Good for the Soul' by Ross Gittins
The Sydney Morning Herald 24/12/2014
