Abstract
BackgroundWith urbanisation increasing, it is important to understand how to design changing environments to promote mental wellbeing. Evidence suggests that local-area proportions of green space may be associated with happiness and life satisfaction; however, the available evidence on such associations with more broadly defined mental wellbeing in still very scarce. This study aimed to establish whether the amount of neighbourhood green space was associated with mental wellbeing.MethodsData were drawn from Understanding Society, a national survey of 30,900 individuals across 11,096 Census Lower-Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England, over the period 2009–2010. Measures included the multi-dimensional Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (SWEMWBS) and LSOA proportion of green space, which was derived from the General Land Use Database (GLUD), and were analysed using linear regression, while controlling for individual, household and area-level factors.ResultsThose living in areas with greater proportions of green space had significantly higher mental wellbeing scores in unadjusted analyses (an expected increase of 0.17 points (95% CI 0.11, 0.23) in the SWEMWBS score for a standard deviation increase of green space). However, after adjustment for confounding by respondent sociodemographic characteristics and urban/rural location, the association was attenuated to the null (regression coefficient B = − 0.01, 95% CI -0.08, 0.05, p = 0.712).ConclusionsWhile the green space in an individual’s local area has been shown through other research to be related to aspects of mental health such as happiness and life satisfaction, the association with multidimensional mental wellbeing is much less clear from our results. While we did not find a statistically significant association between the amount of green space in residents’ local areas and mental wellbeing, further research is needed to understand whether other features of green space, such as accessibility, aesthetics or use, are important for mental wellbeing.
Highlights
With urbanisation increasing, it is important to understand how to design changing environments to promote mental wellbeing
The primary aim of this research was to test two hypotheses: (1) that neighbourhood areas of England with greater proportions of local-area green space are associated with higher levels of mental wellbeing; and (2) that the association between the proportion of local area green space and mental wellbeing may be confounded and/or modified by urban versus rural location
As exploratory analyses revealed the distribution of Short WarwickEdinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (SWEMWBS) to be moderately skewed, we investigated the variance of this output in order to determine the most appropriate modelling technique
Summary
It is important to understand how to design changing environments to promote mental wellbeing. Evidence suggests that local-area proportions of green space may be associated with happiness and life satisfaction; the available evidence on such associations with more broadly defined mental wellbeing in still very scarce. Emerging evidence suggests that aspects of the physical environment, and exposure to nature in particular, are often associated with higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction [20,21,22]. While these are important aspects of mental wellbeing, the relationship between green space and this multi-dimensional view of mental wellbeing remains relatively unexplored [20,21,22,23,24]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
