- Street trees can help reduce the need for antidepressants among city dwellers, according to new research.
- Its findings back up studies that indicate time spent among foliage and in nature can help relieve a number of stress-related conditions.
- Socio-economic inequalities often correlate with inequalities in tree distribution.
- Planting more urban trees could help address this issue, according to the study.
Planting trees in urban areas can help reduce stress and anxiety for the people living there, according to a new study.
An experiment in Germany suggests that simply living within 100 metres of a tree can be enough to reduce the need for antidepressant drugs.
Dr Melissa Marselle and a team of scientists wanted to see if urban flora had any discernible correlation with the mental wellbeing of city-dwellers.
Their investigations were informed by many studies that showed time spent in nature could reduce anxiety in sufferers. One found that test subjects who had spent more time in leafy surroundings showed lower levels of a biochemical stress indicator called serum cortisol. Another concluded that it even improved levels of concentration in children with attention deficit disorder.
Marselle, a psychology lecturer at De Montfort University (DMU) in the British city of Leicester, studied the medical prescription data of almost 10,000 residents in the German city of Leipzig and plotted that data against distribution maps of urban greenery.
The results did indeed suggest that proximity to trees corresponded with a lower rate of antidepressant prescription. More precisely, they showed that living within 100 metres of a tree – of any species – was associated with lower use of antidepressants.
The study found that proximity to trees reduced antidepressant prescriptions
Image: De Montford University
But they also found that the link was stronger in lower-income neighbourhoods.
“Our finding suggests that street trees, a small-scale, publicly accessible form of urban greenspace, can help close the gap in health inequalities,” Marselle said on the DMU website.
She concluded that “street tree planting in residential areas of cities may be a nature-based solution to reduce the risk of depression” and said it had “important implications for urban planning and nature-based health interventions in cities”.
Marselle’s experiment supports the findings of many other observations, both scientific and anecdotal, that suggest reconnecting with nature is not only good for the environment but also for the body and mind.
In one case reported in The Guardian, a resident of a poor area of Baltimore found that her mental health improved so much after a programme of street greening that she was able to stop taking the antidepressants she’d been prescribed for many years.
Nature’s revitalizing properties have long been understood in Japan, where they are enshrined in the concept of shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing”. The practice of spending regular spells in the countryside to bring peace and relaxation is a part of everyday life for millions of Japanese.
One in four people will experience mental illness in their lives, costing the global economy an estimated $6 trillion by 2030.
Mental ill-health is the leading cause of disability and poor life outcomes in young people aged 10–24 years, contributing up to 45% of the overall burden of disease in this age-group. Yet globally, young people have the worst access to youth mental health care within the lifespan and across all the stages of illness (particularly during the early stages).
In response, the Forum has launched a global dialogue series to discuss the ideas, tools and architecture in which public and private stakeholders can build an ecosystem for health promotion and disease management on mental health.
One of the current key priorities is to support global efforts toward mental health outcomes - promoting key recommendations toward achieving the global targets on mental health, such as the WHO Knowledge-Action-Portal and the Countdown Global Mental Health
Read more about the work of our Platform for Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare, and contact us to get involved.
So apparent are the changes that some experts even claim to have pinpointed how much forest bathing is necessary to restore mental wellbeing. University of Michigan scientists, who used measurements of cortisol levels in subjects, put it at 20-30 minutes of exposure to nature. Meanwhile, an investigation led by Cornell University found that as little as 10 minutes may be sufficient.
Such findings have been taken on board by medical practitioners, too. A group of doctors in the Scottish Shetland Islands have begun prescribing hill and coastal walks as a treatment for mental illness, diabetes and other conditions, The Guardian reports.