Residential green space in childhood is associated with lower risk of psychiatric disorders from adolescence into adulthood

Abstract

Urban residence is associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders, but the underlying drivers remain unknown. There is increasing evidence that the level of exposure to natural environments impacts mental health, but few large-scale epidemiological studies have assessed the general existence and importance of such associations. Here, we investigate the prospective association between green space and mental health in the Danish population. Green space presence was assessed at the individual level using high-resolution satellite data to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index within a 210 × 210 m square around each person’s place of residence (∼1 million people) from birth to the age of 10. We show that high levels of green space presence during childhood are associated with lower risk of a wide spectrum of psychiatric disorders later in life. Risk for subsequent mental illness for those who lived with the lowest level of green space during childhood was up to 55% higher across various disorders compared with those who lived with the highest level of green space. The association remained even after adjusting for urbanization, socioeconomic factors, parental history of mental illness, and parental age. Stronger association of cumulative green space presence during childhood compared with single-year green space presence suggests that presence throughout childhood is important. Our results show that green space during childhood is associated with better mental health, supporting efforts to better integrate natural environments into urban planning and childhood life.

A two-stage approach to identifying and validating modifiable factors for the prevention of depression

“…Environmental factors such as pollution and exposure to natural environment showed initial associations with depression-risk and protective effects, respectively-that did not persist after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, and were thus not tested in the MR framework. While these unadjusted findings were in line with growing evidence 40 , it may be that environmental exposures exert stronger influences earlier in development 41 , or shape lifetime mental health risk rather than incident cases in a relatively short follow-up period. In addition, sub-features of the natural environment (e.g., tree versus grass coverage) have shown divergent effects on mental health risk 42 , requiring more nuanced study than possible here.…”

Entropy of city street networks linked to future spatial navigation ability

“…Urban pattern analysis is a vast interdisciplinary field of research, spanning from sociology [39] to architecture [40] and traffic forecast [41]. If a city's culture and history influence its topology [42], the latter in return structures the behaviour, cognition and mental health of its inhabitants [8][9][10]. Space Syntax studies developed a set of metrics to quantify the different dimensions of the interactions between societies and urban patterns [43].…”

“…In humans, spatial navigation activates the hippocampus [6], and continuous navigation of a large complex city environment increases posterior hippocampal volume [7]. While living near green spaces has been found to be strongly beneficial, urban residence has been associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders [8][9][10]. However, how the environment experienced during childhood and early life impacts later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood for two reasons.…”

Innovations in Camera Trapping Technology and Approaches: The Integration of Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence

“…Taking too much leisure time can make people feel guilty or lazy and, in some cases, people have described participating in citizen science as a good excuse to slow down and enjoy nature, in a way that would otherwise have made them feel guilty [28,29]. This increased engagement with the natural world can have a variety of health benefits, such as improved mood, mental health and cognition as well as increased physical activity through engaging in outdoor activities [30][31][32][33]. Busy modern lives, urban living, and changes in culture and the employment sector, mean many people are spending less time in nature [34], leading to what has been termed an 'extinction of experience' [35].…”