A healthy mind in a healthy ecosystem
Good mental health is essential for people to live healthy and happy lives. Across the EU countries, close to one in two people (46%) experienced an emotional or psychosocial problem in 2023. The total costs of mental health problems have been estimated at more than 4% of the GDP (or more than €600 bil-lion) in 2015.
Environmental quality is known to affect mental health. Presence of nearby green are-as can benefit mental health, while air pollu-tion, noise and high temperatures can have a negative impact.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detri-mental impact on European’s well-being. People were less able to visit parks during strict lockdowns, but green space exposure through private gardens might have had a pro-tective effect on mental health.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, environmen-tal stressors, such as air pollution, and socio-economic deprivation were associated with increased utilisation of mental health ser-vices. On the other hand, presence and amount of trees, as well as sunlight, were as-sociated with less mental health service utili-sation, suggesting a possible protective role for these factors. Lockdown measures en-forced during the pandemic modified such re-lationships.
Engaging citizens in research on the effect of the living environment on mental health demonstrated the importance of not only the physical attributes of the environment (e.g. amount of nearby green space) for well-being, but also their functional characteristics (e.g. opportunity for socialising) and its politi-cal dimension (e.g. urban planning).
VAN RIJN Elaine;
MARANDO Federica;
QUAGLIA Anna Paola;
RIGHI Valeria;
VECCHIONE Elisa;
WOLLGAST Jan;
2024-04-22
European Commission
JRC136908
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136908,
Additional supporting files
| File name | Description | File type | |
|---|
