Living near woodlands is good for young people’s mental health

The FINANCIAL — Analysis of young people’s proximity to woodlands has shown links with better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems.

The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Medical Research Council (MRC), could influence planning decisions in urban areas.

It is believed to be one of the largest studies of its kind.

Researchers used longitudinal data relating to 3,568 children and teenagers, aged nine to 15 years, from 31 schools across London.

This period is a key time in the development of adolescents’ thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world.

Investing in environmental research

The study was conducted by scientists at University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London and published in Nature Sustainability.

Researchers looked at the links between different types of natural urban environments and the pupils’:

• cognitive development
• mental health
• overall wellbeing.

The environments were divided into what planners call green space (woods, meadows and parks) and blue space (rivers, lakes and the sea), with green space separated further into grassland and woodland.

Satellite data

Researchers used satellite data to help calculate each adolescent’s daily exposure rate to each of these environments within 50m, 100m, 250m and 500m of their home and school.

After adjusting for other variables, the results showed that higher daily exposure to woodland (but not grassland) was associated with higher scores for cognitive development.

There is a 16% lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems two years later.

Linking environment with human health

A similar but smaller effect was seen for green space, with higher scores for cognitive development, but this was not seen for blue space.

The researchers note though that access to blue space in the cohort studied was generally low.

Examples of other explanatory variables considered included the young person’s:

• age
• ethnic background
• gender
• parental occupation
• type of school, for example, state or independent.

The level of air pollution might have influenced adolescents’ cognitive development, but researchers did not feel these observations were reliable or conclusive, and these require further investigations.

Vital role of the environment

It is already estimated that one in 10 of London’s children and adolescents between the ages of five and 16 suffer from a clinical mental health illness.

Excess costs are estimated between £11,030 and £59,130 annually for each person.

As with adults, there is also evidence that natural environments play an important role in children and adolescents’ cognitive development and mental health into adulthood. But less is known about why this is.

The results of this study suggest that urban planning decisions to optimise ecosystem benefits linked to cognitive development and mental health should carefully consider the type of natural environment included.

Natural environments further away from an adolescent’s residence and school may play an important role too, not just their immediate environment.

Positive exposure

Lead author, PhD student Mikaël Maes of UCL said:

Previous studies have revealed positive associations between exposure to nature in urban environments, cognitive development and mental health.

Why these health benefits are received remains unclear, especially in adolescents.

These findings contribute to our understanding of natural environment types as an important protective factor for an adolescent’s cognitive development and mental health and suggest that not every environment type may contribute equally to these health benefits.

Forest bathing, for example (being immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of a forest), is a relaxation therapy that has been associated with physiological benefits, supporting the human immune function, reducing heart rate variability and salivary cortisol, and various psychological benefits.

However, the reasons why we experience these psychological benefits from woodland remain unknown.

Positive effects of woodlands

Joint senior author Professor Mireille Toledano of the MRC Centre for Environment and Health and principal investigator of the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP), Imperial College London said:

It’s been suggested previously that the benefits of natural environments to mental health are comparable in magnitude to family history, parental age and even more significant than factors like the degree of urbanisation around you, but lower than your parents’ socio-economic status.

Sensory and non-sensory pathways have been suggested as potentially important for delivering cognition and mental health benefits received from exposure to nature.

It’s critical for us to tease out why natural environments are so important to our mental health throughout the life course.

Does the benefit derive from the physical exercise we do in these environments, from the social interactions we often have in them, or from the fauna and flora we get to enjoy in these environments or a combination of all of these?

Psychological benefits

Joint senior author Professor Kate Jones of UCL said:

One possible explanation for our findings may be that audio-visual exposure through vegetation and animal abundance provides psychological benefits, of which both features are expected in higher abundance in woodland.

Even though our results show that urban woodland is associated with adolescent’s cognitive development and mental health, the cause of this association remains unknown.

Published in Net Zero Week, the study was supported by:

• NERC
• MRC
• National Institute for Health Research.

It involved researchers from:

• UCL
• Imperial College London
• Birkbeck, University of London.