How can nature benefit my mental health?
Spending time in green space or bringing nature into your everyday life can benefit both your mental and physical wellbeing. For example, doing things like growing food or flowers, exercising outdoors or being around animals can have lots of positive effects. It can:
improve your mood
reduce feelings of stress or anger
help you take time out and feel more relaxed
improve your physical health
improve your confidence and self-esteem
help you be more active
help you make new connections
provide peer support.
We all have different experiences of nature, and different reasons for wanting to connect with it more – or feeling unsure about whether to try. You might find you get something completely different from one activity compared to someone else.
Spending time in nature has been found to help with mental health problems including anxiety and depression. For example, research into ecotherapy (a type of formal treatment which involves doing activities outside in nature) has shown it can help with mild to moderate depression. This might be due to combining regular physical activity and social contact with being outside in nature. Being outside in natural light can also be helpful if you experience seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression that affects people during particular seasons or times of year. And people tell us that getting into nature has helped them with many
other types of mental health problems.
What nature ideas could I try?
grow or pick food
bring nature inside
do activities outdoors
help the environment
connect with animals
Don’t worry if some ideas don’t feel right for you – see if you can find some that do, or adapt one to suit you.