3 ways to Improve Your Mental Health
The genesis of COVID-19 has forced many of us to get back to basics and come back down to earth...even in the literal sense! With the recent challenges of staying home, many of us are choosing to engage in outdoor activities such as gardening, particularly community gardening.
The psychological benefits of gardening are rooted in the sub-discipline of ecopsychology. Eco psychology investigates how human psychological health and wellness is contingent on the natural environment. It also interrogates how upheaval in the natural environment such as climate change, can cause psychological distress.
Being bombarded with such catastrophic news constantly can lead to feelings of despair, helplessness and chronic concern. If not addressed immediately, these feelings can manifest into more serious illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Particularly in a contemporary world where we are disconnected from the natural environment, it is pivotal we remain engaged with our natural surroundings through endeavours such as community gardening.
Check out some of the way ways community gardening can improve your mental health below.
Colour Psychology? Yes, it’s a thing…
The colour green obviously has the greatest association with nature, however it also signifies peace, tranquillity, growth and harmony. The colour green slows down our metabolism and produces a calming effect. How does it do this? Increased exposure to greenery boosts metabolic and heart health whilst also reducing stress hormones carried in the blood.
Some may argue physical activity associated with community gardening is what reduces stress simply by looking at green spaces and natural landscapes. The University of Exeter Medical School found that people living close to green spaces had less incidence of mental distress than those living in urban areas.
2. Fostering Gratitude
Community gardening is one of the best ways to foster gratitude because it enhances appreciation for the food we eat through an understanding of how it grows and the time it takes to grow. The concept of gratitude is important in facilitating the reduction of mental illness such as anxiety and depression.
Gratitude increases happiness, empathy, prosocial behaviour and reduces aggression. In addition, fostering gratitude through gardening has shown to improve sleep, enhance self-esteem and emotional fortitude. Being in a community garden fosters gratitude and reduces the symptoms of mental illnesses by forming new positive schematic pathways that enable receptiveness to positive experiences and resilience against negativity, which is definitely something we all need at the moment!
3. Reduce the symptoms of stress on the nervous system
Health practitioners are increasingly recommending more holistic approaches to health such as community gardening to reduce the onset and prevalence of anxiety and depression. Spending time in nature through the action of getting your hands dirty is a form of mindfulness and decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for rumination (the tendency to fixate on negative thoughts) and inhibits our ability to act mindfully. Engaging in community gardens is a way to remedy this by speaking with other members, joining in working bees and events or even just the simplicity of gardening itself.
Chronic stress can reduce the capacity of the prefrontal cortex, meaning emotion regulation and memory function becomes inhibited. In addition, this can allow for increased activity of the amygdala which is responsible for perceptions of threat and stress. By participating in a community garden, you increase your socialisation, reduce the isolating effect mental illness can have on your body and mind, especially during the forced isolation of a global pandemic.
“Engaging in community gardens is a way to remedy this by speaking with other members, joining in working bees and events or even just the simplicity of gardening itself.”
There are so many ways community gardening can improve your mental health. Whether it provides mental and physical benefits that can bring you out of your mind and into the present or increase your socialisation and productivity, the benefits are endless!
Words by Christina Rojas, August 2020
Please note: This blog post is not intended to replace medical or psychological treatment. Please contact your healthcare practitioner for further advice.
