• Last updated: Tue, Dec 17, 2024Status: Ongoing
• Olof Östergren, Cecilia Stenfors, and Yan Ma

Was residential nature access a protective factor for the development of mental health problems in the population during the COVID-19 pandemic?

A growing body of research have found that exposures to natural environments in terms of green and blue space can have positive effects on several aspects of human mental wellbeing and health. Residential access to natural spaces may have an increasingly important factor for mental health during the pandemic when people were required or encouraged to spend more time at home. There is a lack of large-scale longitudinal studies which assess the extent to which residential green and blue space access plays a role in protecting and buffering against poor mental health in terms of prevalence and incidence of mental health outcomes during and in the aftermath of COVID-19 related restrictions.

The aims of the project are to investigate if and to what extent access to natural green and blue spaces in the residential environment was associated with mental health during the pandemic, if the role of residential access to green space changed during the different stages of the pandemic and if these patterns were especially pronounced for groups that were likely to be spend more time at home and in the residential area as a result of non-pharmaceutical interventions.