Access to the outdoors — think gardens, bodies of water or trails — reduced the chance that older people rated their health poorly. That is according to a report published this month in Health & Place.
Investigators looked at health survey data from more than 42,000 people over the age of 65 who lived in urban areas in Washington state. All of the people surveyed lived there between 2011 and 2019. The researchers looked at measures of happiness in relation to access to green and blue spaces (parks and water).
Nearly 2% of participants showed signs of serious psychological distress and 19% reported having fair or poor general health. When people had just 10% more forest space close to where they lived, it was linked to reduced serious psychological distress including mental health problems. A 10% increase in green space, tree cover, water bodies or trail length reduced the likelihood that people reported fair or poor health.
Older adults are especially prone to mental health issues like depression, which has been shown to raise the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. At the same time, they’re less likely to receive treatment to manage their mental health conditions, the authors noted.
“If exposure to green or blue spaces could help prevent, delay or even treat poor mental health in older adults, we need to look at that more closely as a way to improve mental health outcomes in this population,” Adithya Vegaraju, first study author and a medical student in the Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, said in a statement.
What can nursing homes do to give residents access to green and blue spaces if they’re not on campus or the residents don’t get out much? One solution could be nature prescriptions, Vegaraju said. This involves giving people written prescriptions to spend time outdoors.
The researchers would like to further study if green and blue space exposure can influence dementia directly or whether it does so by lowering mental health issues that subsequently drive cognitive decline.
