Mental health benefits of interactions with nature in children and teenagers: a systematic review

Abstract

BackgroundIt is commonly believed that nature has positive impacts on children’s health, including physical, mental and social dimensions. This review focuses on how accessibility to, exposure to and engagement with nature affects the mental health of children and teenagers.MethodsTen academic databases were used to systematically search and identify primary research papers in English or French from 1990 to 1 March 2017. Papers were included for review based on their incorporation of nature, children and teenagers (0–18 years), quantitative results and focus on mental health.ResultsOf the 35 papers included in the review, the majority focused on emotional well-being and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity disorder. Other outcome measures included overall mental health, self-esteem, stress, resilience, depression and health-related quality of life. About half of all reported findings revealed statistically significant positive relationships between nature and mental health outcomes and almost half reported no statistical significance.ConclusionsFindings support the contention that nature positively influences mental health; however, in most cases, additional research with more rigorous study designs and objective measures of both nature and mental health outcomes are needed to confirm statistically significant relationships. Existing evidence is limited by the cross-sectional nature of most papers.

Effects of natural environment on mental health: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

“…Lastly, we excluded 107 articles which did not meet at least one of our criteria and included 20 articles in this umbrella review (see Figure 1). [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]…”

“…A majority of the recruited articles (n = 13) were systematic narrative reviews, [22][23][24][26][27][28]31,34,[36][37][38][39] and remaining articles were meta-analytic reviews (see Table 2). 21,25,29,30,32,33,35,40 .…”

“…The quality evaluation of the reviews found no study with low quality, six studies with medium quality, 24,[27][28][29]38,40 and remaining 14 studies with high methodological quality (see Supplemental File 1). [21][22][23]25,26,[30][31][32][33][35][36][37]39…”

“…Nine reviews had at least one study from Asia, 21,25,26,[28][29][30]35,36,40 whereas only two reviews had at least one study from Central or Latin America 22,29 , and only one study included a primary study from South Africa. 23 Seven reviews included no primary study from Central or Latin America, Africa, or Asia. 24,27,31,32,34,38,39…”

Growing up healthy in the city: Pathways to child health and development benefits from nature

“…) and suggesting that presence of natural features in urban parks may be particularly important for children's emotional, social and cognitive development(Kuo, Barnes & Jordan 2019;Tillmann et al 2018). These results are consistent with my hypothesis that features of local and district parks afford different types of experiences and thus contribute to an area's child development outcomes in different ways.Considering the potential pathways to child development from urban parks, links between emotional maturity and local parks may relate to a sense of familiarity or extension of home for families who visit the space frequently.…”