Spending time in nature can improve kids’ mental health: Montreal study

Simply spending two hours a week in nature seems to help 10- to 12-year-olds, whose mental health is the most fragile, a study led by a researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine suggests.

“We would have expected that there would be a greater average impact on all children,” admitted Sylvana Côté, who is a researcher at the Azrieli Research Center at CHU Sainte-Justine and professor of social medicine and prevention at the University of Montreal.

“But even if the effects are not significant for all children, they are still going in the right direction, and we have effects for children who had the most serious problems at the start.”

Led by Côté, the research team from McGill University and the Observatory for the Education and Health of Children of the Université de Montréal conducted a study in the spring of 2023 on the effects of nature on the behavior and mental health of 1,000 schoolchildren from 33 primary schools in Quebec, all of which were located within one kilometre of a green space.

Half of the children benefited from interventions in nature, and the other half served as a control group. During the two hours per week spent at the park, the staff taught outside, for example mathematics, language or science.

The researchers also asked the teachers to integrate a 10- to 15-minute activity focused on mental health, chosen from the suggestions in the kit put together by the research team: drawing a tree or a mandala, writing a haiku, walking in full awareness, talking about the cycle of life in nature, etc.

At the end of a three-month period, teachers observed the most notable behavioral changes in children who had the greatest problems – anxiety and depression, aggression and impulsivity, or problems interacting with peers – at the beginning of the study.

“We are talking about changes to educational practices that can be done at zero cost,” said Côté. “The good news is that the children in the study … had few symptoms of mental health problems, so there was little room for improvement. When things are already going well enough, improvement is more difficult to achieve.”

Specifically, teachers reported that youth seemed calmer, relaxed, and attentive in class after spending time in nature.

There is a craze at the moment for interventions in nature, said Côté, and we even see doctors and pediatricians “prescribing” nature as an intervention for mental health.

Despite this trend, she continues, there is little serious work that measures what impact this can have, for whom, and under what conditions.

“We all agree that going outside in nature is a good idea, but to what extent can we recommend it as an intervention to improve (mental health) problems?” said Côté.

This could be the first study of its kind ever carried out. Taken together, these findings, the researchers wrote, “indicate that the intervention may, at a minimum, help reduce mental health disparities among children with preexisting symptoms.”

“Our results showed small benefits in certain subgroups (children with previous mental health symptoms),” they specified. “This corresponds to nature-centered therapeutic approaches designed for people in difficulty and initiatives such as ‘nature prescriptions’ taken by health professionals.”

And although the study did not demonstrate benefits for children without pre-existing mental health symptoms, the authors add, “there may be unmeasured benefits.”

The intervention could thus “be preventive” and potentially mitigate “future challenges.” There may also be short-term improvements in mood for all children. The intervention could finally lead indirectly to lifestyle modification, such as reducing sedentary behaviors, “which can improve outcomes, such as physical fitness, academic motivation, self-regulation, autonomy and confidence in itself.”

The findings of this study were published by the medical journal JAMA Network Open.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews