Trees help our young minds grow

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-07-20 01:00

Australia; NSW

Being around trees daily is great for brain development and mental health of young people, according to Aussie researchers who looked at long-term data from youngins at 31 schools around the UK. The team examined the effect of green space (woodland and grassland) and blue space (lakes, rivers and reservoirs) on brain development, mental health and overall wellbeing of adolescents aged 9 to 15 years. They found, after adjusting for other variables, higher daily exposure to woodland, but not grassland, was associated with higher scores for brain development and a lower risk of emotional and behaviour problems for young people. A similar but smaller effect was seen for green space, but not blue space. The team says these results could help better urban planning to improve development and health of young minds.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Sustainability

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of New South Wales

Funder: This study is supported by funding of the London Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Training Program (NE/L002485/1, M.J.A.M), the MRC Centre for Environment and Health (MR/L01341X/1, M.B.T.) based at Imperial College London and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in the Health Impact of Environmental Hazards, based at King’s College London and Imperial College London, in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) (HPRU-2012-10141, M.B.T.). SCAMP is independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Policy Research Program (PRP) (Secondary School Cohort Study of Mobile Phone Use and Neurocognitive and Behavioural Outcomes/091/0212) via the Research Initiative on Health and Mobile Telecommunications, a partnership between public funders and the mobile phone industry. An extension to SCAMP is funded by NIHR PRP. The funders of the study had no role in the design or conduct of the study or the reporting of the SCAMP study results. M.B.T. chair and the work in this paper are supported in part by a donation from Marit Mohn to Imperial College London to support Population Child Health. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, DHSC, PHE or any other funder.

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