Associations between green/blue spaces and mental health across 18 countries

Abstract

Living near, recreating in, and feeling psychologically connected to, the natural world are all associated with better mental health, but many exposure-related questions remain. Using data from an 18-country survey (n = 16,307) we explored associations between multiple measures of mental health (positive well-being, mental distress, depression/anxiety medication use) and: (a) exposures (residential/recreational visits) to different natural settings (green/inland-blue/coastal-blue spaces); and (b) nature connectedness, across season and country. People who lived in greener/coastal neighbourhoods reported higher positive well-being, but this association largely disappeared when recreational visits were controlled for. Frequency of recreational visits to green, inland-blue, and coastal-blue spaces in the last 4 weeks were all positively associated with positive well-being and negatively associated with mental distress. Associations with green space visits were relatively consistent across seasons and countries but associations with blue space visits showed greater heterogeneity. Nature connectedness was also positively associated with positive well-being and negatively associated with mental distress and was, along with green space visits, associated with a lower likelihood of using medication for depression. By contrast inland-blue space visits were associated with a greater likelihood of using anxiety medication. Results highlight the benefits of multi-exposure, multi-response, multi-country studies in exploring complexity in nature-health associations.

Access to Nature via Virtual Reality: A Mini-Review

“…The virtual natural environments demonstrated in the relevant studies contained both blue and green environments (see Supplementary Table 1 ). A recent study has implied the difference between actual green and blue environments ( White et al, 2021 ). According to Wang et al (2019) , the corresponding responses may also vary with the type of virtual environment.…”

“…Being exposed to nature, including blue and green natural environments, is known to elicit a range of physical and mental health benefits (e.g., improve emotional states, reduce the risk of mental health issues, and benefit cardiovascular functions) ( Gascon et al, 2015 ; White et al, 2021 ). Nowadays, various natural environments provide urban dwellers with important health resources to mitigate harmful exposures and their effects on urban living, such as pollution, attention depletion, and stressful short-term experiences ( Ilies et al, 2007 ; Li H. et al, 2020 ).…”

First Assessment of the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Marine Recreational Fisheries

“…Social restrictions imposed in many countries led to an increase in the global demand of the population for the outdoors (Ding et al, 2020), and the more advanced recreational fishers particularly suffered from a lack of access to blue areas, especially for those living in urban areas (Rice et al, 2020;Venter et al, 2020;Herman and Drozda, 2021;White et al, 2021b). As a result of the frustration of fishers with restriction measures imposed to recreational fishing access there were some protests, e.g., in France, or Greece, at a time of great uncertainty.…”

Connectedness to Nature Does Not Explain the Variation in Physical Activity and Body Composition in Adults and Older People

“…In the present investigation, and despite the extent of green space in the sample area of residence (19,204 ha), no associations were identified between these two variables. According to White et al [70], more than living in green/coastal areas, it is recreational visits to these natural environments that translate into greater community benefits and perhaps more of an affectionate relationship with nature.…”