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Prescribing nature: Research suggests the outdoors are good for your mental health
Dr. Melissa Lem says spending time outdoors can clear our minds, lower our stress.
For many teenagers, a driver's licence can mean freedom to visit the mall — but for Jon Cadang, it offered him a reprieve from the depression that consumed him for years.
One of his first stops? A creek near his home in Mississauga, Ont., abundant in fish that he was determined to catch.
It would take Cadang two weeks before he landed one, but it taught the forager and painter that nature could be a powerful treatment to what ails him.
"I realized that whole time, I stopped ruminating about my situation — all the bad things that were happening," said Cadang, now 25. "I realized that maybe being out here and putting myself towards a goal, even if that's just to catch fish, maybe that could help," he told Back to the Land host Duncan McCue.
"I liked what I saw. I felt at peace."
A growing body of research suggests that being outdoors can benefit mental health and boost memory, improve cardiovascular health and help us live longer. Additional studies find that nature lowers cortisol, the body's stress hormone.
With that research in hand, doctors in parts of Canada have signed on to provide what are known as "nature prescriptions" for those living with mental illnesses and physical health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
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Ontario To Provide Free Therapy For People With Anxiety Or Depression
“Through this ground-breaking program, an individual will receive an assessment from a trained mental health clinician and offered a therapy program that best addresses their level of need.”
Ontarians will soon be able to get free therapy for anxiety and depression through a program called Mindability, the health minister announced Tuesday.
“Mindability will be funded just like OHIP [Ontario Health Insurance Plan], with no out-of-pocket cost to patients,” Minister Christine Elliott said at a mental health centre in Whitby, Ont.
“Through this groundbreaking program, an individual will receive an assessment from a trained mental health clinician and offered a therapy program that best addresses their level of need.”
She said the program will offer cognitive behavioural therapy only for people who have anxiety or depression.
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FAST FACTS ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH AND MENTAL ILLNESS by CAMH
Mental health and mental illness: what’s the difference?
- Mental health and mental illness are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.
- “Mental health” is a concept similar to “physical health”: it refers to a state of well-being. Mental health includes our emotions, feelings of connection to others, our thoughts and feelings, and being able to manage life’s highs and lows.
- The presence or absence of a mental illness is not a predictor of mental health; someone without a mental illness could have poor mental health, just as a person with a mental illness could have excellent mental health.
- Problematic substance use is sometimes linked to poor mental health or mental illness; it can be a coping strategy for untreated trauma, pain, challenging thoughts or emotions, or other health symptoms.
Who is affected?
- Everyone has mental health and will experience challenges regarding their mental well-being, but not everyone will experience a mental illness.
- Mental illness indirectly affects all Canadians at some time either through their own experience, or that of a family member, friend or colleague.
- In any given year, 1 in 5 people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness.
- By age 40, about 50% of the population will have or have had a mental illness.
- Mental illness affects people of all ages, education, income levels, and cultures; however, systemic inequalities such as racism, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, colonial and gender-based violence, among others, can worsen mental health and symptoms of mental illness, especially if mental health supports are difficult to access.
- Major depression affects approximately 5.4% of the Canadian population, and anxiety disorders affect 4.6% of the population.[1]
- About 1% of Canadians will experience bipolar disorder (formerly called “manic depression”), and another 1% will experience schizophrenia.
- Eating disorders affect approximately 1 million Canadians – between 0.3-1% of the population. They impact women at a rate ten times that of men, and have the highest rate of mortality of any mental illness.[2]
- Substance use disorders affect approximately 6% of Canadians.[3]
- 4,012 Canadians died by suicide in 2019.[4]
- In Canada, suicide disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples; the rate of suicide among First Nations is three times higher than among non-Indigenous Canadians, and nine times higher among Inuit.[5]
- The mortality rate due to suicide among men is three times the rate among women, but girls and young women are three times more likely than men to harm themselves and be hospitalized from self-harm.[6]
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