Ecotherapy is good for depression

[watervole]

Only half an hour after I'd been recommending a walk in the country to a friend with depression, I got a note in my email from the Charities Aid Foundation.  The reseach linking exercise in green places is getting very positive results.

"researchers at the University of Essex found that 71 percent of people said a 30-minute walk in the countryside lifted the symptoms of their depression."

Conservation isn't all about fluffy bunnies.  It's about us.  We need nature.

Comments

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

A thirty minute walk will ease your depression no matter where you are - it worked wonders for me just pottering around Chester at Eastercon, along the walls and suchlike. Admittedly, the countryside is a slightly nicer place to walk, but I've always found walking to be theraputic no matter where I'm headed. :)

[metamorphosa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you for that. It's really good to hear that study results are finally coming out about this! It never ceases to amaze me how much this kind of information is new to people.

I have long advocated being amongst nature as a way out of depression. It also found it told me a lot about what the cause of depression was, too! Personally, a factor I found beneficial that I feel needs to be pushed more, is that it needs to be *proper* countryside. I have lived in areas where there have been huge beautiful arboretums that successfully give the visual impact of countryside, but if you can hear the cars x feet away, then it just isn't the same. The feeling of awe that you get from being surrounded by vast countryside has an immense impact. Plus people need to 'feel' nature - sit or lie on the grass, for example, not just walk down a beautifully-laid path. I used to take my children out in the pram every day into rural countryside, and now if they don't go out every day they get very despondent. As you say, we *need* nature.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Chester has lovely views from the walls. Pretty much counts as country in many ways.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

That's all very well, but one of the things guaranteed to annoy me, big time, is being on a nature reserve and bumping into people who clearly aren't into natural history of any kind, haven't got bins, don't know a moorhen from a mayweed etc. And all too often they've got a dog. A nature reserve is *not* a place to walk the bloody dog, however publicly accessible it is. Just sitting here writing this is getting me all wound up, it really pisses me off that much.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Dogs and nature reserves are not a good combination - especially when people let them off the lead in nesting season...

[merrymaia.livejournal.com]

a factor I found beneficial that I feel needs to be pushed more, is that it needs to be *proper* countryside. I have lived in areas where there have been huge beautiful arboretums that successfully give the visual impact of countryside, but if you can hear the cars x feet away, then it just isn't the same. The feeling of awe that you get from being surrounded by vast countryside has an immense impact. Plus people need to 'feel' nature - sit or lie on the grass, for example, not just walk down a beautifully-laid path.

Yes!

[merrymaia.livejournal.com]

Conservation isn't all about fluffy bunnies. It's about us. We need nature.

Yes.

Thank you for posting this.

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

All walking is therapeutic, but nature walks are especially helpful. People need nature ... in fact, we become affectively psychotic when we're removed from it.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

It's the invasion of space that I object to, rather than the dogs. Natural history-aware people who walk their dogs in a reserve I don't mind (they should at least take a responsible attitude to keeping the animal under control where necessary). What annoys me is the people who go to a reserve with walking the dog as the primary objective.

There's a certain amount of snobbery involved. Birders can be very dismissive of the nature-ignorant masses, even - perhaps especially - those who appreciate the nature without knowing what it is. Oooh, innit luvverly, all these pretty flowers, wonder what they are... Whereas Real Naturalists ignore the pretty flowers and grapple with the bract arrangement on knotgrass. Like all snobbery, it's hard to justify, but the feeling is real and can be very strong.