CITATION: Tillmann, S., Tobin, D., Avison, W., & Gilliland J. (2018). Mental health benefits of interactions with nature in children and teenagers: A systematic review. Journal Epidemiology & Community Health, 72, 958-966. LINKGOAL: The authors of the following paper set out to examine whether research has been conducted to observe the connection between children’s mental health and exposure to nature. "PARTICIPANTS": Ten different research databases were analyzed for such content between the years 1990 and 2017. They looked at three separate components of the literature. The first was whether the title of the research related to the subject they were looking for. Next, the abstract was taken into consideration for meeting a number of criteria the researchers were looking for, such as participant demographics and mentioning nature. The third and final part was the document itself for the same criteria used to screen the abstracts. As a result, the researchers were left with thirty-five articles which were able to be placed in one of eight different categories. These groups were emotional well-being, self-esteem, depression, stress, overall mental health, ADD/ADHD, resilience, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL).**HRQOL includes a range of "factors influencing mental health including physical, emotional, social, school, family, friends and self-esteem functioning" (Tillmann, Tobin, Avison, & Gililand, 2018).RESULTS: After a thorough analysis of the final cluster of 35 scholarly articles, most pertained to categories of ADD/ADHD and emotional well-being. Five out of eight groups showed positively significant findings. First, the category of stress, how accessible and one’s level of engagement to nature were taken into account and about seventy percent of the findings supported a positive and significant relationship between interacting with nature and reducing stress levels. For overall mental health, almost seventy percent of the findings discovered significantly positive results. When looking at ADD/ADHD, seven of thirteen findings across the papers were a statistically significant and positive association; an increase in both accessibility and exposure to nature showed signs of improvement for symptoms of ADD/ADHD. Shifting gears to resilience, the three studies focused on one’s sense of mastery with resilience, as well as relatedness and emotional reactivity. Being with nature resulted in improved coping skills, comfortability interacting with others, and self-efficacy. Lastly, two articles pertaining to HRQOL had significance in four of their total findings about the positive correlation of this variable and nature exposure.
CITATION: Ballew, M.T. & Omoto, A.M. (2018). Absorption: How nature experiences promote awe and other positive emotions. Ecopsychology, 10(1), 26-35. LINK**This study defines "awe" as, "involving strong, positive feelings of amazement and wonder and is “an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that defy one's accustomed frame of reference in some domain" (Ballew & Omoto, 2018). Additionally, absorption is a feature of flow. Flow is defined as, "subjective, experiential state characterized by complete absorption in what one does, such as the effortless absorption experienced by the practiced artist at work on a difficult project" (Ballew & Omoto, 2018).GOAL: The authors set out to determine if brief, yet engaging, exposure to nature will trigger awe and other similar positive emotional responses. HYPOTHESES: The first hypothesis states individuals who have a short moment with nature will report increased levels of awe and similar emotions and also feelings of absorption. The second one states that a partial mediator for the effect predicted in H1 would be heightened absorption. Furthermore, the connection of exposure to a natural setting with reported positive emotions will be measured once an absorption effect is evaluated.PARTICIPANTS: The study consisted of 100 university students at an California institution. The highest demographic characteristics of this pool are women (55 percent) and those who identify as Hispanic and/or Latinx (45 percent). Fifty-three of the participants were placed into the "natural environment" condition, as opposed to the rest who were in the "built environment" condition. The individuals would be in their setting condition for approximately 15 minutes where they were instructed to observe various properties of their surroundings (i.e., color, sounds). Afterwards, they all filled out a questionnaire survey. RESULTS: H1 was supported; individuals in the condition of a natural setting self-reported higher measures of awe and other positive emotions (joy, contentment, and happiness) in comparison to the industrial environment. Additionally, H2 was supported; absorption was determined to be a mediator of the relationship between natural settings and positive emotions and was also ruled out of being a moderator. Being fully "a part of"/absorbed in nature can result in feeling positively. The researchers implicate that this can be used to encourage others to practice external mindfulness (focusing on the surrounding environment), as opposed to an internal one (focusing on one's body/breath).
CITATION: Gouda, S., Luong, M.T., Schmidt, S., & Bauer, J. (2016). Students and teachers benefit from mindfulness-based stress reduction in a school-embedded pilot study. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(590), 1-18. LINKGOAL: To review the present literature on mindfulness interventions for students and teachers and determine whether current Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR) programs for each of these groups (separately) show signs of psychological improvements for participants. The effects were also evaluated at a 4 month follow-up.HYPOTHESES: There are two hypotheses for this study. First, the researchers hypothesize that both teachers and students that partake in MSBR programs will present notable improvements in their overall well-being, mental health, and levels of creativity. The second hypothesis states that the two groups will have differences in how they respond to the mindfulness practices.PARTICIPANTS: Participants were pulled from a school in Germany. The researchers obtained 29 11th grade students and 29 teachers for their study. For the student participant pool, 15 were placed in the intervention condition and the remaining 14 were in the "waitlist" condition. In the teacher group, 14 of them were assigned to the intervention condition whereas 15 were placed in the "waitlist" condition. All the participants identified as female. RESULTS: Students in the MSBR course condition were shown to have improvements in self-reported stress levels (lower levels of anxiety), interpersonal problems, self-regulation, and self-efficacy (general and school-related). Additionally, student participants in the intervention condition reported higher levels of mindfulness, but the effect was not significantly shown until the 4 month follow-up analysis. Furthermore, for the teacher group, there was an increase (though not statistically significant) in emotional regulation and self-efficacy. However, there were significant improvements in interpersonal issues (reduced) and self-reported mindfulness (increased). The attitudes that the program helped improve were presence and acceptance. Thus, H2 is supported. There were different results for the differing age groups. This is likely because they are (clearly) at contrasting points in their lives/developmentally, which in result will foster different life challenges and sources of stress.
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