Growing Mental Health and Wellbeing

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Growing Mental Health and Wellbeing

• Dr. Mardie Townsend
• Deakin University

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Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places
to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and
cheer and give strength to body and soul
alike John Muir (1838-1914) Founder of
the Sierra Club
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Defining health

• Health a state of complete physical, mental
  and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence
  of disease or infirmity (WHO, 1946)

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Defining wellbeing

• Wellbeing includes satisfactory human
  relationships, meaningful occupation,
  opportunities for contact with nature, creative
  expression, and making a positive contribution to
  human society (Furnass, 1996)

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Threats to human health and wellbeing

• Rapid increase in obesity
• Growing rates of mental illness
• High levels of family breakdown
• Declining social capital/community cohesion

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Importance of nature to human wellbeing

• Humans are dependent on nature for survival and
  for wellbeing
• Linked to our evolution biophilia
• Urbanisation separation from nature too recent
  to have allowed for adaptation

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Health benefits of contact with nature

• Benefits reduced stress, boosted immunity,
  enhanced mental health, speedier recovery
• Mechanisms viewing nature being in nature
  contact with plants contact with animals

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Evidence

• Gall bladder patients recovered more quickly with
  a natural view (Ulrich, 1984)
• Pet owners had lower CVD risk factors (Anderson
  et al., 1992)
• Community garden schemes reduce personal
  neighbourhood problems (Lewis, 1996)
• Exercise in green environments ? lower blood
  pressure (Pretty et al. 2004, unpublished)

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Gardens - a health promotion tool?

• Human beings love flowers!
• No other nature-based activity more widely shared
  than gardening
• Benefits for physical health
• Sense of peacefulness tranquility
• Restorative environments

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Community gardens

• What are community gardens?
• What are their benefits?
• Examples of community gardens
• Dig In community garden study

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But what about ?

• Lack of interest among children youth
• Lack of space in urban environments
• Lack of water
• Measuring the effects

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How fair is a garden amid the trials and
passions of existence Benjamin Disraeli