Background: The physical and mental health of citizens living in a country that encouraged face masks (China) and discouraged face masks (Poland) during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic remained unknown. We conducted a crosscountry study to compare the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Poles and Chinese. This study aimed to compare the levels of psychological impact of pandemic and levels of anxiety and depression between China and Poland. Methods: The survey collected information on demographic data, physical symptoms, contact history, and precautionary measures. The psychological impact was assessed using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and mental health status was assessed by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The chi-squared test was used to analyze the differences in categorical variables between the two populations. Linear regression was used to calculate the bivariate associations between independents variables (e.g., physical symptoms and precautionary measures) and dependent variables (e.g., mental health outcomes). Results: This study included a total of 2,266 respondents from both countries (1,056 Poles and 1,210 Chinese). There were significantly less Polish respondents who wore face masks (Poles: 35.0%; Chinese: 96.8% p < 0.001). Significantly more Polish respondents reported physical symptoms resembling COVID-19 infection (p < 0.001), recent medical consultation (p < 0.01), recent COVID-19 testing (p < 0.001), and hospitalization (p < 0.01). Furthermore, Polish respondents had significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression and stress (p < 0.001) than Chinese. The mean IES-R scores of Poland

(1) Background: Prolonged lockdowns with stay-at-home orders have been introduced in many countries since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have caused a drastic change in the everyday lives of people living in urbanized areas, and are considered to contribute to a modified perception of the public space. As research related to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on mental health and well-being emerges, the associated longitudinal changes of brain hemodynamics in healthy adults remain largely unknown. (2) Methods: this study examined the hemodynamic activation patterns of the prefrontal and occipital cortices of 12 participants (5 male, Mage = 47.80, SDage = 17.79, range 25 to 74, and 7 female, Mage = 39.00, SDage = 18.18, range 21 to 65) passively viewing videos from three urban sites in Singapore (Urban Park, Neighborhood Landscape and City Center) at two different time points—T1, before the COVID-19 pandemic and T2, soon after the lockdown was over. (3) Results: We observed a significant and marginally significant decrease in average oxyhemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) over time for each of the visual conditions. For both green spaces (Urban Park and Neighborhood Landscape), the decrease was in the visual cortex, while for the City Center with no green elements, the marginal decrease was observed in the visual cortex and the frontal eye fields. (4) Conclusions: The results suggest that the COVID-19-related lockdown experienced by urban inhabitants may have contributed to decreased brain hemodynamics, which are further related to a heightened risk of mental health disorders, such as depression or a decline in cognitive functions. Moreover, the busy City Center scenes induced a hemodynamic pattern associated with stress and anxiety, while urban green spaces did not cause such an effect. Urban green scenes can be an important factor to offset the negative neuropsychological impact of busy urban environments post-pandemic.

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The main objective of this essay is to illustrate the state-of-the-art on ‘mental health-sensitive’ open space design in the built environment. Urban Green Blue Infrastructure can contribute to urbanites’ mental health and wellbeing as well as healthy aging, while providing co-benefits balancing the negative impacts of climate change, through the provision of integrated ecosystem services. There are a number of ways that exposure to and affiliation with Nature have shown to support mental health, but we are still missing the necessary evidence of the actual benefits achieved, as well as the key performance indicators and metrics to monitor and adapt our open space to the growing urban challenges. After introducing the key concepts of degenerative mental disorders as they are growing in the urban environment, and the emerging green blue infrastructure design approach, the authors present international case studies describing how evidence-based design and Nature-based Solutions have been found to be beneficial, especially to those diagnosed with mental disorders. Subsequently, in a comparative critical analysis, the authors look closer at a number of design solutions capable, at different scales, to support healthy aging through exposure to, and affiliation with, biodiversity.

A growing body of evidence from observational and experimental studies shows the associations between exposure to urban green spaces (UGSs) and mental health outcomes. Little is known about which specific features of UGS that might be the most beneficial. In addition, there is potential in utilizing objective physiological markers of mental health, such as assessing brain activity, but the subject requires further investigation. This paper presents the preliminary findings from an on-going within-subject experiment where adult participants (n = 22; 13 females) were passively exposed to six landscape scenes within two UGSs (a park and a neighborhood green space) and three scenes of a busy urban downtown (control site). The landscape scenes were pre-selected based on their contemplative landscape score (CLS) to represent different levels of aggregation of contemplative features within each view. Participants went to each of the sites in a random order to passively view the scenes, while their electroencephalography (EEG) signal was being recorded concurrently. Frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) values, commonly associated with the approach-related motivation and positive emotions, were extracted. The preliminary results show trends for the main effect of site on FAA, suggestive of stronger FAA in park compared to the control site, akin to more positive mood. There was also a trend for the interaction between the site and scene, which suggests that even within the individual sites, there is variability depending on the specific scene. Adjusting for environmental covariate strengthened these effects, these interim findings are promising in supporting the study hypothesis and suggest that exposure to urban green spaces may be linked to mental health outcomes.

Background: Studies on Contemplative Landscapes (CL) show that not only do they have high ecological and visual values and are preferred by a majority of people, but they also can be beneficial to our mental health and well-being. Physical attributes of CL have been studied and operationalized, which has led to the development of the psychometric measurement tool called the Contemplative Landscape Questionnaire (CLQ) (1).Objectives: In the present study, we applied an experimental approach to the analysis of CL. We hypothesized that, when compared to Non-Contemplative Landscapes (NCL), they would induce higher frontal alpha power asymmetry, higher temporal beta power asymmetry and lower bilateral frontal beta power.Methods: Thirty-two healthy individuals (12 female) took part in the study. During the experimental protocol, participants were asked to passively view 12 landscapes, six CL and six NCL, while continuous EEG was recorded in a within-subjects design.Results: We found significantly increased power in the beta frequency band of the right temporal brain regions in the viewings of CL compared to NCLConclusions: The findings suggest that Contemplative Landscapes capture more visual, stimuli-driven attention from the viewers and can be linked with switching attention systems (described in Attention Restoration Theory), which is compatible with a stress reduction mechanism.

With the growing interest among researchers, practitioners, and urban decision makers in the influence of the built environment on peoples’ health, there is increasing emphasis on using scientific knowledge to inform urban design, including methods of neuroscience. As window views are the most immediate medium of visual connection with one’s neighbourhood, we surmised that the quality of this view would have an impact on the mental health and well-being of urban dwellers. Accordingly, we investigated how window views taken from different floors of a high-rise block with varying extents of green cover affected 29 healthy residents in an exploratory electroencephalography (EEG) experiment. The results showed that the amount of green cover within the view captured at different floor levels can cause an important interaction effect on the frontal alpha and temporal beta brain oscillations while participants view photographs. These results suggest that the brainwave patterns commonly associated with positive emotional states, motivation, and visual attention mechanisms may be increased by the extent of green cover within the view. This phenomenon seems more pronounced on the higher than lower floors. The observed findings at this stage cannot confirm major effects between floor level, green cover, and brainwaves, however, they emphasize the importance of considering the quality of window views in the planning and design of urban high-rise neighbourhoods. Having a green window view can potentially contribute to the mental health and well-being of urban dwellers.

Background: There is little understanding on how brief relaxation practice and viewing greenery images would affect brain responses during cognitive tasks. In the present study, we examined the variation in brain activation of the prefrontal cortex during arithmetic tasks before and after viewing greenery images, brief relaxation practice, and control task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Method: This randomized controlled study examined the activation patterns of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in three groups of research participants who were exposed to viewing greenery images (n = 10), brief relaxation practice (n = 10), and control task (n = 11). The activation pattern of the PFC was measured pre- and post-intervention using a portable fNIRS device and reported as mean total oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO μm). Primary outcome of the study is the difference in HbO μm between post- and pre-intervention readings during a cognitive task that required the research participants to perform arithmetic calculation. Results: In terms of intervention-related differences, there was significant difference in average HbO μm when performing arithmetic tasks before and after brief relaxation practice (p < 0.05). There were significant increases in average HbO μm in the right frontopolar cortex (p = 0.029), the left frontopolar cortex (p = 0.01), and the left orbitofrontal cortex (p = 0.033) during arithmetic tasks after brief relaxation practice. In contrast, there were no significant differences in average HbO μm when performing arithmetic tasks before and after viewing greenery images (p > 0.05) and the control task (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Our preliminary findings show that brief relaxation practice but not viewing greenery images led to significant frontal lobe activation during arithmetic tasks. The present study demonstrated, for the first time, that there was an increase in activation in neuroanatomical areas including the combined effort of allocation of attentional resources, exploration, and memory performance after the brief relaxation practice. Our findings suggest the possibility that the right frontopolar cortex, the left frontopolar cortex, and the left orbitofrontal cortex may be specifically associated with the benefits of brief relaxation on the brain.