The physical and mental health benefits of nature for adults are well documented in the literature. Not as frequently studied or as well understood are the benefits of nature for adolescents. This study explored the relationship between the natural environments of residential neighborhoods and the emotional health of adolescents living in urban New Zealand.
Measures used for this study assessed three aspects of the natural environment around residential addresses: greenness, vegetation diversity, and blue space. These measures were calculated within 400 m, 800 m, and 1600 m of the residential address. A composite available nature index was also used in the data analysis. Mental health assessment results and demographic data of 4575 adolescents were accessed from the 2012 wave of the Youth2000 survey series conducted with representative samples of New Zealand secondary school students. Two different mental health assessments were used – one focusing on wellbeing, the other on depressive symptoms.
The data showed that a higher level of greenness was associated with reduced adolescent depressive symptoms. These results are consistent with other studies documenting the emotional health benefits of green space for New Zealand adults. These results also support the accumulating evidence indicating that greener environments are associated with a range of positive health outcomes for different population groups. The current study found no relationship between blue space and adolescent emotional health. It did find, however, that adolescents with three or more natural elements in their residential neighborhoods tended to have lower rates of depressive symptoms than those with less natural elements. This finding suggests that for depressive symptoms having more natural environment characteristics may be more important than a single element of nature. An unexpected result showed that greater variability in greenness was associated with reduced wellbeing.However, the authors suggest that this finding should be interpreted with caution given that their metric of greeenspace variability is an unproven proxy for biodiversity.
The overall results “highlight the importance of considering more than just greenness or green space exposure when examining the emotional health benefits of the natural environment.” Future nature and health research should consider, among other things, (a) the wellbeing benefits of a wide range of measures of the natural environment, (b) the combined effects of different elements of natural environments, and (c) whether specific combinations of environmental features are more important than others.
This study provides evidence that “living in greener neighbourhoods is associated with improved emotional health for urban dwelling young people.” This research, then, highlights the importance of protecting, rehabilitating, and planning for natural spaces in urban environments.
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