We all know how much crucial it is to take care of our mental wellbeing. Nowadays we spend our most of the time at work or on the phone. Our increasing reliance on technology, cooupled with an urban lifestyle reduces time spent outdoors. However, did you know spending time in nature improves mental health?
How can nature benefit mental wellbeing?
Spending time in green space, you can improve both your mental and physical wellbeing. Activities, such as growing food or flowers, exercising outdoors or being around animals can have a plethora of positive effects. It can:
- Improve your physical health
- Improve your confidence and self-esteem
- Help you be more active
- Reduce loneliness
- Help you feel more connected to nature
- Improve your mood
- Reduce feelings of stress or anger
- Help you take time out and feel more relaxed
Mental Wellbeing during the Pandemic
Nature has played a critical role in our mental health. During pandemic, spending time outdoors has been one of the key factors enabling people to cope with the stress of the COVID-19. Nearly half (45%) of the participants in a survey conducted by the UK told Mental Health Foundation reported an increase in mental wellbeing after visiting green spaces. Other research that found that people visiting and noticing nature, was important in supporting their wellbeing. This is a really important point. It helps us understand that a connection with nature helps unlock mental health benefits and gives us essential clues on how to maximise these benefits for our well-being.
Connection with Nature
People with good nature connectedness tend to be happier people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile. Nature can generate many positive emotions, such as calmness, joy, and creativity and can facilitate concentration. Nature connectedness is also associated with lower levels of poor mental health, particularly lower depression and anxiety.
People with strong nature connectedness are likelier to have pro-environmental behaviours such as recycling items or buying seasonal food. This is likely to lead to further benefits if these pro-environmental activities can lead to natural improvements that we can then go on to enjoy. At a time of devastating environmental threats, developing a stronger, mutually supportive relationship between people and the environment will be critical.
We can develop a new relationship with the natural world by noticing nature, which has been found to bring benefits to mental health.
Nature Promoted Cognitive Development
Green spaces near schools promote cognitive development in children and green views near children’s homes promote self-control behaviours. Adults assigned to public housing units in neighbourhoods with more green space showed better attentional functioning than those assigned to units with less access to natural environments. And experiments have found that being exposed to natural environments improves working memory, cognitive flexibility and attentional control, while exposure to urban environments is linked to attention deficits.
Experimental findings show how impressive nature’s healing powers can be—just a few moments of green can perk up a tired brain. In one example, Australian researchers asked students to engage in a dull, attention-draining task in which they pressed a computer key when certain numbers flashed on a screen. Students who looked out at a flowering green roof for 40 seconds midway through the task made significantly fewer mistakes than students who paused for 40 seconds to gaze at a concrete rooftop.
Even the sounds of nature may be recuperative. Researchers found that study participants who listened to nature sounds like crickets chirping and waves crashing performed better on demanding cognitive tests than those who listened to urban sounds like traffic and the clatter of a busy café.
The Healing Effect of Nature
Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. It may even reduce mortality, according to scientists such as public health researchers Stamatakis and Mitchell.
Research done in hospitals, offices, and schools has found that even a simple plant in a room can have a significant impact on stress and anxiety.In addition, nature helps us cope with pain. Because we are genetically programmed to find trees, plants, water, and other nature elements engrossing, we are absorbed by nature scenes and distracted from our pain and discomfort.
Conclusion
Exposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation. Most research so far has focused on green spaces such as parks and forests, and researchers are now also beginning to study the benefits of blue spaces, places with river and ocean views. But nature comes in all shapes and sizes, and psychological research is still fine-tuning our understanding of its potential benefits. In the process, scientists are charting a course for policymakers and the public to better tap into the healing powers of Mother Nature.
So, this is how important role nature plays in our life and we should take care of Mother Nature because it is very very beneficial to our wellbeing.
Always keep in mind to take a stroll in the park, make time to visit nature rich places and do not forget to have plants in your house.
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Written by: Atharv Deshmukh