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FRIDAY, July 20, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Fixing up blighted physical environments, particularly in resource-limited urban settings, may improve the mental health of residents living nearby, according to a study published in the July issue of JAMA Network Open<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Eugenia C. South, M.D., from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues evaluated whether interventions to green vacant urban land can improve self-reported mental health among 342 community-dwelling adults living in Philadelphia. A total of 110 clusters were randomly assigned to the greening intervention (removing trash, grading the land, planting new grass and trees, installing a low wooden perimeter fence, and performing regular monthly maintenance), the trash cleanup intervention (removal of trash, limited grass mowing, and regular monthly maintenance), or a control group.<\/p>\n
The researchers observed a significant decrease in participants who were feeling depressed (P = 0.03) and worthless (P = 0.04), among those assigned to greening versus the control. Furthermore, there was a non-significant reduction in overall self-reported poor mental health (P = 0.051). The greening intervention demonstrated a significant decrease in feeling depressed (P = 0.007) among participants living in neighborhoods below the poverty line. There were no significant changes in self-reported poor mental health among those living near the trash clean-up intervention versus control lots not assigned to an intervention.<\/p>\n
“The treatment of blighted physical environments, particularly in resource-limited urban settings, can be an important treatment for mental health problems alongside other patient-level treatments,” the authors write.<\/p>\n
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