Mental Health Benefits of Long-Term Exposure to Residential Green and Blue Spaces: A Systematic Review

By M. Gascon, M. Triguero‐Mas, David Martinez, P. Dadvand, J. Forns, A. Plasència, M. Nieuwenhuijsen. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2015

1,052 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many studies conducted during the last decade suggest the mental health benefits of green and blue spaces. We aimed to systematically review the available literature on the long-term mental health benefits of residential green and blue spaces by including studies that used standardized tools or objective measures of both the exposures and the outcomes of interest. We followed the PRISMA statement guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analysis. In total 28 studies were included in the systematic review. We found limited evidence for a causal relationship between surrounding greenness and mental health in adults, whereas the evidence was inadequate in children. The evidence was also inadequate for the other exposures evaluated (access to green spaces, quality of green spaces, and blue spaces) in both adults and children. The main limitation was the limited number of studies, together with the heterogeneity regarding exposure assessment. Given the increase in mental health problems and the current rapid urbanization worldwide, results of the present systematic review should be taken into account in future urban planning. However, further research is needed to provide more consistent evidence and more detailed information on the mechanisms and the characteristics of the green and blue spaces that promote better mental health. We provide recommendations for future studies in order to provide consistent and evidence-based recommendations for policy makers.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c7d46dc46d86afd3350f58a44c4c357e84af4ab

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In Environmental Engineering

T. Hartig

In Global and Planetary Change

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

Citations in the corpus

Contact with blue-green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown beneficial for mental health (2020, neutral): “…spaces (e.g. urbanparks,woodlands, rivers and the coast), has a range of potential benefits for mental health and well-being (Irvine et al., 2013; Gascon et al., 2015, 2017; Thomsen et al., 2018; Bratman et al., 2019; Borja et al., 2020), also referred to as cultural ecosystems services…”
Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: Theoretical and methodological guidance (2017, background): “…spaces are meant; Taylor and Hochuli, 2017) are beneficial for multiple measures of health for urban populations in relatively high-income countries (e.g. Hartig et al., 2014; James et al., 2015; van den Berg et al., 2015; Gascon et al., 2015, 2016b; Dzhambov et al., 2014; de Keijzer et al., 2016).”
The Role of Methodological Choices in the Effects of Experimental Exposure to Simulated Natural Landscapes on Human Health and Cognitive Performance: A Systematic Review (2020, methodology): “Nevertheless, other reviews of nature exposure and human health have also found that a substantial number of study methodologies could be improved to generate more convincing findings (Browning & Rigolon, 2019; Gascon et al., 2015).”
Urban Green Space and Its Impact on Human Health (2018, background): “These reviews have focused on various topics, including children [5], mental health [6], and violence [7].”
A systematic map of research exploring the effect of greenspace on mental health (2020, background): “One review has called for the increase in the number of longitudinal assessments and natural experiments to better understand the causal associations between blue spaces, health and wellbeing as well as the influence of change in circumstances and exposure over a life course (Gascon et al., 2017).”
Associations between park features, park satisfaction and park use in a multi-ethnic deprived urban area (2019, background): “Recent systematic reviews have highlighted the association between exposure to green space and improvement in both mental (Bowler, Buyung-Ali, Knight, & Pullin, 2010; Gascon et al., 2015) and physical health outcomes (Twohig-Bennett & Jones, 2018).”