Nature and Mental Wellbeing

Hopefully you’re aware that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. Mental well-being is something that nobody would have been able to ignore over the past year, with the pandemic and the lockdowns implemented to deal with it causing immeasurable damage to people’s mental health. Throughout the past year the stream of bad news stories has been horrendous, with the endless speculation about where it might all end and how best to deal with it. Your previously fairly sane-seeming friends may have metamorphosed into froth-mouthed conspiracy theory-spouting maniacs or started to refuse to go outside in anything other than a Hazmat suit. And that’s before you get on to the unimaginable horror and tragedy of the actual pandemic itself. To put it mildly, it’s all been a bit too much.

There has been a fair bit of optimism from time-to-time – as I type this my immune system is busily producing the antibodies and t-cells for fighting Covid-19, after receiving my first vaccination against it. Difficult though the lockdowns, distancing and mask wearing are, they’ve also been very effective at saving lives. We’ve had a horrible year stuck in our homes a lot more than is healthy for us, but because we did this there are people alive who wouldn’t be otherwise,  which is something that isn’t said enough. Looking after our mental health in lockdown has been very hard, but a lot of people have discovered that (aside from never looking at the news or your social media feed) one of the best ways to improve your mental well-being has been through connection to nature.

I have suffered with depression for as long as I can remember. It became really hard to manage at a few times in my life, particularly when I found it hard to spend time outside. I remember having a tough winter working in a major London museum, mostly in the basement of the building with no natural light, and then travelling by tube to and from work every day. I ended up worrying that I was turning into Gollum, constantly running round tunnels and never seeing the sun, so as I continued in my career in education and science communication I moved to working outdoors and this really helped with dealing with my mood.

Lockdown was a recipe for mental health disaster, and I have to remind myself constantly that at the point we locked down in March last year, the alternative would have been even worse. I had a holiday booked in Shetland and an ambition to spot all of the UK’s resident and breeding bird species that year. All of that went out of the window because for those first two months my entire world was reduced to a small one-bedroom flat, the patch of ground where the bins went out and Bushy Park. The park really was a lifesaver because, once a day of course, it was the one place I could go and explore and connect with the natural world.

A lot of people think that merely spending time outside will boost mental health but what really benefits us is termed, “Nature Connectedness” a scientific term for the degree to which a person feels nature to be part of their identity. It’s more than just going out and spotting things, or knowing what things are called, it’s about the extent to which you feel a strong emotional or sensory connection to the environment. I have always spent time in wild places, having grown up between the chalky hills of Dorset and Wiltshire and the heaths and woods of the New Forest. I feel a strong bond to the natural world; if I’m walking down the street I’ll stop to look at an interesting bird or an unfamiliar plant growing up through the pavement. I love to stand by a reedbed in spring and listen to the chatter of the birds as they arrive from Africa and set up their breeding territories. I savour the feel of the sea breeze over the cliffs on a wild coast. And for two months I had to make do with the open parklands of Bushy Park.

We were lucky in this respect – the park is a SSSI and teems with wildlife. I can walk through grassland serenaded by skylarks and feel like I’m back on the chalk downs or I can wander near the bracken and watch the deer. On our wedding anniversary we got up at 5am and went out to listen to the Dawn Chorus – it was an amazing experience, with the mist rising off the lightly frosted grass and the sun glowing through it as an eerie golden ball. As we walked we were surrounded by the melodious fluting, trills and chirps of blackcaps, wrens and chiffchaffs, amongst others. The combination of the slight chill in the fresh air, the sounds of the birds and the play of the light through freshly unfurled leaves meant that for one sweet hour we could forget the crisis that was sweeping the world and just enjoy the wonder of nature, just on our doorstep.

So next time you’re outside, even if you’re a seasoned wildlife expert, take a moment to stop and breathe and just savour the experience of being in a world teeming with life. You don’t need to be in the countryside, or even a SSSI-listed urban park to do it – I was watching swifts from our front step during lockdown and even the antics of the humble sparrows outside our window are a joy. Research has shown that it’s through these kinds of emotional connections that people are more likely to become inspired to protect the world and care about the environment. If you work in the environmental movement it’s doubly worth taking note of this because in the scramble to shout about how humans are destroying the world, we forget that it’s only by engaging with humans and helping them realise that they are part of nature that we’ll be able to save it.