Does a natural environment enhance the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)? Examining the mental health and wellbeing, and nature connectedness benefits

By E. Choe, Anna Jorgensen, David Sheffield. 2020

104 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This study investigated whether the impacts of a commonly used wellbeing intervention, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), are enhanced when combined with the benefits of exposure to a natural environment. Participants (n = 99) were randomly assigned to a weekly one-hour MBSR in one of three different environments (i.e. natural outdoor, built outdoor and indoor environments) over a six-week period. Participants’ wellbeing outcomes and nature connectedness were measured at baseline, during the intervention and at one-week and one-month follow up. The results show that the mental health and wellbeing outcomes of MBSR are greater when it carried out in a natural outdoor environment compared with indoor or built environments. Moreover, participants in the natural outdoor environment showed sustained improvements even after one month from completion of the intervention. This study supports the potential value of natural environments as settings for the enhancement of health care delivery and therapeutic interventions.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Conservation, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0dc05a8904dc71d53912381f2060ce918832f656