Concrete Human
André Clemetsen
The trees along the river
Nothing compares to the trees along the city's river, whispering quiet words of love.
There, I believe everyone feels held and cared for – even if yesterday was heavy with darkness.
For a fortnight, a smartphone app asked 299 people three times a day how they were, and they answered 7,975 times in all. 87 of them had a diagnosis of mental illness. The mental health researcher Nicol Bergou and colleagues compared the answers given within 24 hours of a visit to a canal or river with the rest. After a visit, people scored 1.35 points higher for wellbeing, on a scale from 10 for the lowest to 50 for the highest, before any adjustment. Time by a canal or river went with higher wellbeing than time in a green space. The link held for people with a diagnosis and for people without one.
Nicol Bergou and others, PLoS ONE, 2022
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271306