According to a Finnish study, visiting parks, community gardens and other urban green spaces can reduce the use of medication for anxiety, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure and asthma among city dwellers. The study found that the positive effects were more evident among those with the lowest annual household income. The healing effect of green spaces needs to be recognised from time to time, although the phenomenon is not unknown.
The term “healing forest” appears early in medieval Hungarian documents. As cities developed, the forests, orchards and vineyards around them, besides their benefits, in modern parlance became places for recreation. During the plague epidemics, people all over Europe escaped the Black Death to nice villa gardens outside the city, which provided good air quality and a healthy environment. Although the Black Death is no longer a cause, activities in closed spaces isolated from nature are one of the reasons of a growing number of mental and physiological illnesses. Researchers in Finland have concluded that visiting green environment three to four times a week can reduce the chance of having to take medication for mental health problems or high blood pressure by a third and by a quarter for asthma. Among their findings is that lack of access to green spaces causes several health problems. Researchers found a significant correlation between green space visits and medication use: those who visited green spaces three to four times a week were 33% less likely to take their medication for mental health problems than those who visited parks and gardens less than once a week. Medication use fell by 36% for people with high blood pressure and by 26% for people with asthma. However, those who spent time in green spaces at least five times a week were only 22% less likely to use mental health medication and 24% less likely to take asthma medication. One of the main findings of the researchers’ is that in cities, increasing availability of high-quality green spaces can result in a significant contribution to improving health and well-being. Therefore, it is important that the new construction and investment law submitted to the Parliament should give priority to green spaces which are crucial for the townscape, and not least to guarantee the involvement of professional landscape architects in the design processes.
The research can be found via the following link, published online by the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine: https://oem.bmj.com/content/80/2/111
