The simple fact of spending two hours a week in nature seems to help young people aged 10 to 12 whose mental health is immediately the most fragile, suggests a study led by a researcher from CHU Sainte-Justine.
Posted at 11:44 a.m.
Jean-Benoit Legault
The Canadian Press
“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 full 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. »
Directed by Mme Côté, the research team from McGill University and the Observatory for the Education and Health of Children of the University of Montreal conducted a study in the spring of 2023 on the effects of nature on behavior and mental symptoms of a thousand schoolchildren from thirty-three primary schools in Quebec, all of which were located less than a kilometer from a green space.
Half of the children benefited from the in-kind intervention and the other half served as a control group. During the two hours per week spent at the park, the staff had to teach the subject planned in the program, 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, composing a haiku, walking in full awareness, talk about the cycle of life in nature, etc.
After 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 M.me Side. 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 in-kind interventions, said Mme Côté, and we even see doctors and pediatricians “prescribing” nature as an intervention for mental health.
But despite this fashion, 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 M.me Side.
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 specify. 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 preventative” 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.
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