Going to the park once a week or more has a measurable impact on a child’s mental health – new study

Mark Ferguson, University of Exeter

Child mental health issues have been rising in the UK over the last decade. This was exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and continues to be a concern, particularly around issues such as sedentary lifestyles and excessive screen time.

In a new study, colleagues and I have found that visiting a local park regularly had a measurable impact on child mental health.

Throughout childhood and through adolescence, children are developing their social and emotional skills. This social-emotional development provides the foundation for good mental health. Failing to reach typical milestones such as developing social skills and friendships provides an indication of a child’s current mental health, as well as their mental health in later life.

This means that finding ways to facilitate and encourage healthy social-emotional development is a way to improve child mental health and give them the foundation for good mental health throughout their lives.

Having green and natural spaces close to people’s homes is one factor which previous studies have shown is linked with improved child mental health. These spaces are thought to improve child mental health by encouraging healthy behaviour. For example, they encourage physical activity, socialising and imaginative and adventurous play. Research suggests that being in natural spaces can have restorative and stress-reducing effects for both children and adults.

Much of the research related to green spaces and child mental health has been cross-sectional study designs. This means that the study measurements are taken at a single point in time, rather than following children over time. While these studies are good at discovering factors which are linked to each other, such as natural spaces and child mental health, they cannot determine whether it was the natural space, or other factors that impacted child mental health.

These studies also typically measure residential proximity to green and natural spaces, rather than measuring how often children are actually taken to these spaces.

What we did in our study

For our study, we chose to focus on visiting parks, as we thought this was likely to enable many of the ways that research has suggested green and natural spaces could improve mental health. We used data from the Children of the 90s study, also known as Alspac (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children), where information was collected about 14,062 children born in and around the English city of Bristol from the early 1990s to the present day. We used data on children’s visits to parks, as well as their mental health, behaviours and family circumstances from birth to 11 years old.

We found that children who were taken to the park at least once a week from six months to 11 years old scored, on average, 16.5% better on their mental health assessments compared to those who were taken less than once a week over the same period.

As we had repeated measurements of visiting parks and mental health, we were also able to understand the impact of going to parks on specific children, rather than only comparing groups of children who visited more and less. We found children tended to display better mental health during periods when they went to parks more often compared to when they went less. This provides stronger evidence than a cross-sectional study because it displays change within an individual.

These findings remained after accounting for disadvantageous family circumstances such as poor housing and maternal mental health, which are known to affect child mental health. The findings were also unchanged when we carried out sensitivity analyses. This is where we change elements of the study, such as what measures we include in the statistical model or which study participants we include in the sample, to see if it affects the results. When the results are consistent across sensitivity analyses, this gives more confidence in them.

We also investigated differences in the frequency of park visits for different groups. Children from more advantaged families were taken to parks more often when they were younger, but as children got older this pattern changed. Some children from less advantaged families were taken to parks more often.

Many children were taken to the park less than once a week for all or parts of their childhood. Our results suggest increasing opportunities to visit parks in childhood could improve children’s mental health and reduce inequalities.

But reducing inequalities in children’s mental health is only likely to be possible if good quality parks are available, safe, welcoming and easy for all families to use.

Mark Ferguson, Research Fellow, European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.