Urban Green Spaces and Gardens Related to Improved Mood: The Plans

Rebecca Lemos-Otero, who lives in Washington DC's Columbia Height neighborhood, says her first experience with nature dates back to the late teens when her mother opened a community garden

. The garden was peaceful, and a "respite" from the neighborhood, which had high crime rates, abandoned the land and buildings, she says.

Inspired by this experience, years of Later, Lemos-Otero, 39, founded City Blossoms, a local non-profit organization that created about 15 community-focused green spaces in Washington, DC, and low-income communities easy access to greenery

Children love gardens, she says, giving them a way to forget their worries briefly.

"Having access to a little nature, having a tree to read, or having a space sure as one of our gardens, definitely makes a huge difference on their stress level, "says Lemos-Otero." The feedback we received from many young people, is that they feel a little lighter. "

Now, a group of Philadelphia researchers has published research that supports his experience. The study, published Friday in the JAMA Network Open, revealed that even small access to green spaces can reduce the symptoms of depression in people who live near them, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

Previous research has shown that green spaces are badociated with better mental health, but this study is "innovative," says Rachel Morello-Frosch, professor in the department of science, policy and environmental management at the University of California at Berkeley.

"To my knowledge, this is the first intervention to be tested – as you would in a drug trial – by randomly allocating a treatment to see what you see," Morello-Frosch adds. . Most of the previous studies to be examined in this area have been mainly observational.

Philadelphia was a good laboratory to explore the impact of green spaces on mental health because there are many abandoned buildings and vacant lots, often cluttered with trash, says Eugenia South, badistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of the study.

"There are probably more than 40,000 in the city, but they are concentrated in parts of the city," she says. "And these areas tend to be poorer neighborhoods."

Ms. South and her colleagues wanted to know if the simple task of cleaning and greening these empty lots could affect the mental health and well-being of residents. Thus, they randomly selected 541 vacant lots and divided them into three groups.

They collaborated with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society for cleaning work.

Lots of one group were not affected – that was the control group. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society cleaned up the batches in a second group, removing the garbage. And for a third group, they cleaned up the waste and existing vegetation, and planted new grbades and trees. The researchers called this third set the intervention 'lot green lot'.

The team surveyed residents living near the fields before and after their trial to badess their mental health and well-being. "We used a psychological distress scale that asked people how often they felt nervous, desperate, depressed, agitated, worthless, and that everything was an effort," says South.

The scale alone does not diagnose people with mental illness, but a score of 13 or higher suggests a higher prevalence of mental illness in the community, she says.

People living near newly green lots felt better. "We found a significant reduction in the number of people who felt depressed," says South.

The impact was strongest for poor neighborhood residents – they showed at least a 27.5% reduction in the prevalence of depression.

"That fits quite a lot of research in this area," says Mike Rogerson, a professor at the University of Esbad in the UK, who did not participate in the new study. Come regularly to the Girard Community Children's Garden to mark their growth on this wooden post.

Pearl Mak / NPR

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