Nature and Mental Health
Follow this link to review a study conducted by OSU Counseling and Consultation Service (CCS). Nature and Mental Health
Benefits of Nature
Research provides evidence that time spent in nature is good for your overall health and well-being. Time spent in nature has been shown to:
- Improve your cognitive ability, specifically by boosting your ability to concentrate and increasing your attention span.
- Mood can be significantly improved in only 5 minutes!
- The more “wild” the environment, the more healing benefits you will receive. So, spending time in an old forest will provide more benefits than walking around a neighborhood, but any time spent in fresh air will benefit you.
- The more mindful we are while in nature, rather than being distracted by our phone or other things, the more benefits we will receive.
- Improve your sense of overall happiness.
- Reduce feelings of and physiological responses to stress.
- Increase your number of social connections and the quality of your social relationships.
- Boost your physical health and well-being.
Tips for increasing nature exposure
- Go for a walk or a hike.
- Have a picnic.
- Stay off your phone and pay attention to the natural world with your senses.
- Take your inside activities outside.
- Get indoor plants.
Evidence-based benefits of nature have received attention from medical and mental health communities in the U.S. and abroad. A growing number of providers recommend that their patients spend time in nature as a sort of “nature prescription.”
Visit the sites below to find out more information about the benefits of nature.
NatureRx @ Cornell
University of Minnesota – Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing
ParkRx
Click on the below links for articles in current literature.
- Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda.
- The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework.
- How might contact with nature promote human health? Promising mechanisms and a possible central pathway.
- The importance of greenspace for mental health.
- The impacts of nature experience on human cognitive function and mental health: Nature experience, cognitive function, and mental health.
- Interacting with nature improves cognition and affect for individuals with depression.
- View through a window may influence recovery from surgery.