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Turning vacant urban land into green spaces greatly reduced feelings of depression and improved overall mental health for the environment residents, according to a new study.
The findings for the United States, where 15 percent of land It is considered "vacant" and often blighted or "over filled" by the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
The research team measured the mental health of Philadelphia residents before and after nearby vacant lots had been converted into green spaces, and they were residents living in the United States
They found that people living within a quarter of a mile radius of greened had a 41.5 percent decrease in feelings of depression compared to those who had lived
People li (19659002) The findings add to the growing body of evidentiary state of the world.
The most recent study from the same research team in the field of violence, violence, and violence. 19659002] "Dilapidated and vacant spaces are factors that put residents at an increased risk of depression and stress, and explain socioeconomic disparities in mental illness persist," said lead author Eugenia C. South, MD, MSHP, an badistant professor of Emergency Medicine and a member of the Center for Emergency Care and Policy Research at Penn.
"What these new data show has a positive impact on the health of those living in these neighborhoods. "
For the study, 541 vacant lots throughout Philadelphia were randomly badigned to one of three study arms: Greening intervention, a trash clean-up intervention, or a control group with no intervention.
The greening intervention involved removing trash, grading the land, planting new grbad and a small number of trees, installing a low wooden perimeter
The trash clean-up of the tramp, and the maintenance of the trash
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society LandCare program performed the greening, trash clean-up, and maintenance
Two sets of pre-intervention and post-intervention mental health surveys were performed among 342 people 18 months before revitalization and 18 months after
Resea Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6), a widely used community screening tool, to evaluate the prevalence of serious mental illness in the community. Participants were asked to indicate how often they felt nervous, hopeless, restless, depressed, that everything was an effort, and worthless.
The results of the study were significantly reduced by 68 percent, the researchers report.
Analyzes of the trash clean-up intervention reported to no intervention showed no significant changes in self-reported mental health, the researchers add.
"The lack of change in these groups is the result of the trash clean-up," said co-author John MacDonald, Ph.D., professor of criminology and sociology at Penn.
" "
Adding green space to neig hborhoods should be considered to be of additional importance to the public, according to the researchers
additional, greening is an affordable approach, costing about $ 1,600 per vacant lot and $ 180 per year to maintain.
"Vacant greening is a highly inexpensive and scalable way to improve cities and enhance people 's health while encouraging them. to remain in their home neighborhoods, "said senior author Charles C. Branas, Ph.D., chair of Epidemiology at Columbia University and an adjunct professor in the department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine.
" While mental health therapies will always be a vital aspect of treatment, revitalizing the places where people live, work, and play, may h ave broad, population-level impact on mental health outcomes. "
The study was published in JAMA Network Open .
Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
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