Pandemic Got You Down? Try Nature!
Having trouble coping with COVID? Go take a hike. Literally. Researchers have long been aware of the positive impact of a connection with nature on psychological health and, according to a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the pandemic hasn’t decreased the power of nature to improve mental well-being.
“Thinking about the natural world in an interconnected and harmonious way corresponds to improved psychological health, no matter where you are,” says Brian W. Haas, the lead author of the new study and an associate professor in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences Program at the University of Georgia.
Haas and his collaborators — Fumiko Hoeft, a professor of psychological sciences at UConn and director of UConn’s Brain Imaging Research Center; and Kazufumi Omura, faculty of Education, Art and Science at Yamagata University in Japan — used a survey in America and Japan to measure worldviews on nature as well as how much the pandemic impacted people’s lives, and their current psychological health.
Excerpted from Science Daily
