a 2017 study<\/a> offered a list of the top impacts of spending time in nature based on an extensive review of existing research: reduced stress, better sleep, reduced depression and anxiety, greater happiness, and reduced aggression. <\/p>\n\n\n\ndifferent nature-based activities can impact the body in various ways. wilkins-hines shares her nature-based advice with patients based on the mental disorders being treated. in her practice, she focuses on clinical anxiety and depression, stress reduction and relaxation, and reiki, where she said she \u201cmanipulates energy to foster healing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
for patients with depression, \u201cthe [activities] that are most impactful are ones where you\u2019re getting the sun because that\u2019s going to improve your mood,\u201d wilkins-hines said. she said the sun provides vitamin d that boosts serotonin, the \u201chappy hormone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cif you’re feeling suicidal and you’re feeling like you don’t belong, i encourage grounding techniques: to walk barefoot, to plant flowers, to plant vegetables \u2013 anything where you’re in the dirt and you’re bringing life to something,\u201d wilkins-hines said. \u201cyou cannot change your way of thinking about the beauty of life [in a better way than] watching something grow into something, being responsible for the life of something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
wilkins-hines said the impact of gardening extends beyond a specific physiological response in the body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201ci think these community gardens afford people that opportunity to come together and share stories and to build interpersonal relationships, to network and to just give a sense of family, give a sense of connectedness. and all of that is beneficial for mental health,\u201d wilkins-hines said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nlittle village community garden members tend to plots of produce and flowers at golden hour on august 5, 2021. \u201ci encourage people to garden, plant flowers, plant vegetables. all of those things help us connect back to mother earth and feel more connected and feel like we belong here,\u201d said psychologist lasonda a. wilkins-hines. (poonam narotam\/medill)<\/em>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nthe impact of nature and gardening on mental health has been known to many for years and prior to the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
kearns said she started to garden around the time she and her husband began the process of separation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cthis is my happy place,\u201d kearns said. \u201cthis was the place that i could just go and kind of forget about it. \u2026 i feel like it’s nourishment for your soul.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
gardening can also help seniors and veterans, according to acevedo, who said seniors are el paseo garden\u2019s largest demographic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
while the pandemic may have intensified certain health conditions for seniors, acevedo said gardening helped their exercise, mental health and, for those who spent time gardening in earlier years, memory loss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
acevedo also said the garden helped seniors feel less isolated, something the pandemic exacerbated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201ceven their own families were afraid to go see them. they didn\u2019t see their children and grandkids,\u201d acevedo said. the garden added most of its new programming to benefit seniors, she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\nto accommodate a large senior population, volunteer organizer paula acevedo said some garden beds at el paseo garden in pilsen are built for a wheelchair to fit underneath. (poonam narotam\/medill)<\/em>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nacevedo said an afghanistan war veteran joined the garden from naperville, a 40-minute drive away, to volunteer his construction skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201che said, \u2018i\u2019m on disability. i don’t work. i need to keep busy, or i’ll lose my mind,\u2019\u201d acevedo said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
kearns said she thinks younger people have an easier time talking about mental health than older people. \u201ceverybody may be just as anxious, but nobody\u2019s talking about it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
louv advocates for children and families to spend more time in nature through his nonprofit organization, children nature network, to benefit all aspects of health within and beyond the context of the pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cironically, the coronavirus pandemic, as tragic as it is, has dramatically increased public awareness of the deep human need for nature connection \u2013\u2013 and is adding greater sense of urgency to the movement to connect children, families and communities to nature,\u201d louv said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201ctoday, nature connection can be one way to heal psychological trauma of the pandemic. not a panacea, but one way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
as the covid-19 pandemic increased the nationwide prevalence of common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and chicagoans turned to community gardening to counteract the symptoms last summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4933],"tags":[2754,3549,325,734,4250,591,4739],"storyfest_categories":[],"class_list":["post-11098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storyfest-2022","tag-community-gardens","tag-mental-health","tag-nature","tag-outdoors","tag-springs","tag-storyfest","tag-summer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
planting seeds of mental health wellness in the face of covid-19 stressors - planet forward<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n