Feeling Stressed At Home? Do This To Improve Your Mood


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Feeling stressed by work? Go take a walk in the park. Got anxiety issues? Go spend a few days in the forest. Head on to the greenspace near you if you want to improve your mental health, a new study suggests. A team was commissioned to look into the evidence by the green spaces on the mental health of with the help of the survey data on more than 6,000 Japanese workers aged between 20 and 60 years old.  It was found that the presence of stronger SOC is more among people who were regular with the walks in forests or greenspaces.

The study was published in Public Health in Practice. The team of researchers, led by Professor Shinichiro Sasahara at the University of Tsukuba, analyzed workers for their sense of coherence (SOC) scores, their demographic attributes, and also their forest/greenspace exposure. SOC comprises three important terms, meaningfulness (finding a sense and meaning in life), comprehensibility (recognizing and understanding stress), and manageability (feeling equipped to deal with stress). Studies imply that factors such as good education and being married help strengthen SOC, whereas smoking and lack of physical activity or exercise can weaken it. People with good SOC also have a greater capacity to cope with stress.

Professor Sasahara added that simple activity like walking in forests/greenspace and needing no special equipment or any kind of training is also beneficial for people living in urban areas. It proves to be a very good habit to improve mental health and manage stress. One can have stronger SOC by taking a walk at least once a week in a forest or greenspace, Professor Sasahara explains. People feel calm as they find comfort in nature. Urban greenspaces are gaining popularity especially in countries like Japan where nature isn’t readily accessible. This allows people working in cities to easily take a walk in the green spaces full of trees.


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Work causes an ample amount of stress that it has become a major public health issue globally. Stress impacts mental as well as physical health and can also hamper productivity resulting in economic loss. People tend to underestimate the local green spaces so they don’t use them as much suspecting if they might or might not improve their mental health. The new study shows that people who regularly take walks in the nearby parks or forests or any greenspace might have extra stress-coping abilities.

Based on the review of several studies it was found that exposure to parks and forests leads to increased momentary wellbeing. Being in nature provides mindfulness, which in turn provides restoration stress. The survey respondents were divided into four groups by the researchers based on their frequency of interaction with forest/greenspace. Then, they kept side by side their walking activity correlated with the attributes like age, marital status, and income with the respondents’ SOC scores, grouping them as weak, middle, and strong.

Those with strong SOC scores showed a significant interrelation with forest and greenspace walking at least once a week. The finding implies that urban greening has greater benefits not just environmentally, but also socioeconomically. There is some evidence of larger and longer-lasting effects of being in a forest compared with an urban park. Although, even really short walks, say 15 minutes, in your local park is beneficial, it’s worth visiting larger parks and natural green spaces outside the city when you can.

There is really strong evidence that walking in a green space like a park or forest can improve mood and reduce feelings of anxiety. However, it is less clear whether exposure to green space reduces anxiety disorders and depression in the long run. Green space enables social interaction and physical activity, which are again both beneficial for mental health. Exposure to green space promotes mental health for both young men and women.

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