Improving Mental Health May Be As Easy As a Walk in the Park

Researchers have known for some time that urban dwellers tend to have higher levels of anxiety and depression than people living outside of cities. Until now, they didn't know why. A new study from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University explores the link between mental health and exposure to natural environments. 

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was designed to investigate the effects of a nature walk vs an urban walk on levels of rumination, what is commonly known as brooding. The findings of the controlled experiment by Gregory Bratman and his colleagues indicate that a walk in the park affects the brain in meaningful ways, whereas a walk through an urban environment does not. "We show in healthy participants that a brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity."

There is much debate about the causes of the dramatic rise in psychiatric diagnoses of mental disorders over the past decade. As the authors note, there are many benefits to urbanization, however, with 70 percent of the global population expected to live in urban environments by 2050, the implications of the study are important to understanding how to treat the epidemic of mental illness. The study reveals "a pathway by which nature experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world."

Hat tip to Gretchen Reynolds for reporting on the study.