Perceptions of green space usage, abundance, and quality of green space were associated with better mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic among residents of Denver

Colleen E Reid; Emma S Rieves; Kate Carlson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0263779

Perceptions of green space usage, abundance, and quality of green space were associated with better mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic among residents of Denver

PLoS One. 2022 Mar 2;17(3):e0263779. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263779. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Colleen E Reid^{1

2}, Emma S Rieves^{1

2}, Kate Carlson¹

Affiliations

¹ Geography Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America.
² Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted both physical and mental health. This study aimed to understand whether exposure to green space buffered against stress and distress during the COVID-19 pandemic while taking into account significant stressors of the pandemic.

Methods: We leveraged a cross-sectional survey on green space exposure and mental health among residents of Denver, CO that ran from November 2019 through January 2021. We measured objective green space as the average NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) from aerial imagery within 300m and 500m of the participant's residence. Perceived green space was measured through Likert scores on five questions about vegetation near the home that captured perceived abundance, visibility, access, usage, and quality of green space. We used generalized linear models to assess the relationship between each green space exposure variable and perceived stress (PSS-4), depression (CES-D-10), or anxiety (MMPI-2) adjusted for sociodemographic and COVID-19 impact variables.

Results: We found significantly higher depression scores for all covid periods compared to the "before covid" period, and significantly higher anxiety scores during the "fall wave" compared to earlier periods. Adjusted for sociodemographic and pandemic stressors, we found that spending a lot of time in green space (usage) was significantly associated with lower anxiety and depression. We also observed significantly lower depression scores associated with NDVI in both buffers (objective abundance) and significantly lower anxiety scores with perceived abundance of green space. There was some evidence of lower anxiety scores for people reporting having high quality green spaces near the home (quality). We did not observe significant associations for any green space metric and perceived stress after adjustment for confounding variables.

Conclusion: Our work provides further evidence of mental health benefits associated with green space exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic even after adjustment for sociodemographic variables and significant pandemic-related stressors.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Parks, Recreational*

Grants and funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Harvard JPB Environmental Health Fellowship (CER) and the Developmental Core of the University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC) (CER). The CUPC is supported by funds from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number P2CHD066613. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. NIH and CUPC did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Researchers at Harvard provided feedback on the study design, but the JPB funders did not. Neither JPB nor Harvard played a role in the data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.