New Research Suggests That Living Near Green Spaces Is Linked To Enhanced Mental Health And Fewer Emotional Problems Among Young Children
Spending time outside has been shown to help adults decrease levels of depression and anxiety, as well as lessen feelings of anger and stress.
Now, a new study suggests living in greener spaces helps the mental health of kids, too.
The findings show that young children’s mental health is linked to spending time in green spaces, and kids who grew up around nature – including natural environments like forests and parks – had fewer emotional problems from ages 2 to 5.
This discovery highlights just how important natural surroundings might be for children’s mental well-being during early life.
Past research has consistently underscored the significance of natural surroundings in promoting mental well-being throughout different agree brackets. Nonetheless, there were few studies that specifically delved into the impact of natural environments on very young children’s mental health.
So, this study was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes program and sought to illuminate the effects of residing in green spaces from infancy on emotional challenges like depression and anxiety during the developmental stages of a child’s life.
To start, the research team asked parents about their 2 to 11-year-old kids’ behavior and checked how much greenery was around their homes when they were born using satellite data – linking the behavioral reports with vegetation density.
The researchers studied 2,103 children from 199 counties spanning 41 U.S. states, which helped the study cover a wide range of socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.
The team also used a measure known as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to see how much live vegetation was close to each child’s home – helping to measure how much exposure to green spaces each child had since birth.
sushytska – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
The study revealed that denser greenery, indicated by higher NDVI values, consistently correlated with fewer emotional problems in young children.
Plus, this association remained significant even after considering various factors that could potentially influence the results, such as the child’s gender, the child’s age at birth, parents’ education level, and their neighborhood’s socioeconomic status.
“Our research supports existing evidence that being in nature is good for kids. It also suggests that early childhood years are a crucial time for exposure to green spaces,” said Nissa Towe-Goodman, one of the study’s authors.
It’s important to note that the positive impacts of green spaces weren’t noticed in older children between the ages of 6 and 11, who probably spent more time outside their immediate neighborhood, especially at school.
This change indicates that the influence of green spaces on mental well-being might be especially important during a child’s early years when they tend to spend more time at home.
So, the research shows how natural settings can aid both early childhood development and mental health. They also indicate that providing access to green spaces could be a key approach in urban planning and public health.
However, this study did have some limitations. Primarily, it did not consider the quality or ease of access to green spaces, and it didn’t examine the impacts of other environmental factors like neighborhood safety or air pollution, which may also impact mental health.
In future studies, researchers could delve deeper into these aspects, in addition to the kinds of activities that children participate in while in green spaces.
“In the future, researchers could look into what kinds of experiences in nature are connected to kids’ early mental health. Also, we should study how creating or preserving natural areas around homes and schools might make a difference in a child’s mental health,” concluded Towe-Goodman.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in JAMA Network Open, visit the link here.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:Science
