Exposure to nature during the Covid-related lockdown is beneficial for a person’s mental health. A new study has found that exposure to natural spaces during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 was beneficial for the mental health of Spanish and Portuguese citizens. The findings of the study were published in the journal Environment International.
The study was carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the Instituto de Saude Publica of the University of Porto (ISPUP).
The research showed that, in Portugal, during the first confinement, people who maintained or increased contact with natural public spaces, such as parks and coastal areas, or who could contemplate these spaces from their homes, presented lower levels of stress, psychological distress and psychosomatic symptoms.
In Spain, those who maintained or increased contact with private natural spaces, such as indoor plants or community green areas, presented lower levels of stress and psychosomatic symptoms. This could be due to the fact that Spain adopted more restrictive measures for foreign circulation during the period analysed.
The research on the effects of nature on mental health during the Covid-19 lockdown was conducted between March and May 2020.
Dr Ana Isabel Ribeiro, researcher at the ISPUP and first author of the work together with Margarita Triguero-Mas from the ICTA-UAB said that “we decided to study whether natural, public and private spaces had a beneficial effect on the mental health of Portuguese and Spanish citizens, helping them to better cope with the negative effects of lockdown”. For her part, Margarita Triguero-Mas adds that “people around us and ourselves talked about how we missed the park we crossed when we went to the office or the walk on the beach with our dogs, so we wanted to check to what extent contact with natural spaces was an important factor during confinement.”
Several previous articles have also shown the positive impact of exposure to natural spaces on mental health, that is, in reducing stress, anxiety and improving psychological well-being as a whole. “Taking into account what is described in the literature, we wanted to evaluate whether people who enjoyed greater exposure to natural spaces during the first Covid-19 lockdown had better mental health indicators than those who had no contact with natural areas”, explained Dr Ribeiro.