During the pandemic, green space in cities helped keep anxiety, depression in check

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-03 06:00

International

Photo by Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash

People with access to green spaces in a US city were likely to have lower levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic, according to international researchers. The team used survey data from Denver asking residents about their mental health before and during the pandemic, as well as their perceptions of how much green space they had access to. The researchers say the usage of green space was associated with lower anxiety and depression, as well as both perceived and objective proximity to green space. However, the researchers say they found no evidence green space access or usage reduced stress levels.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research PLOS, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo ends

Journal/
conference: PLOS ONE

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Funder: Research reported in this publication was supported by the Harvard JPB Environmental Health Fellowship (CER) and the Developmental Core of the University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC) (CER). The CUPC is supported by funds from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number P2CHD066613. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. NIH and CUPC did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Researchers at Harvard provided feedback on the study design, but the JPB funders did not. Neither JPB nor Harvard played a role in the data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.