The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 51 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Associations between green/blue spaces and mental health across 18 countries
Open accessAbstract
Living near, recreating in, and feeling psychologically connected to, the natural world are all associated with better mental health, but many exposure-related questions remain. Using data from an 18-country survey (n = 16,307) we explored associations between multiple measures of mental health (positive well-being, mental distress, depression/anxiety medication use) and: (a) exposures (residential/recreational visits) to different natural settings (green/inland-blue/coastal-blue spaces); and (b) nature connectedness, across season and country. People who lived in greener/coastal neighbourhoods reported higher positive well-being, but this association largely disappeared when recreational visits were controlled for. Frequency of recreational visits to green, inland-blue, and coastal-blue spaces in the last 4 weeks were all positively associated with positive well-being and negatively associated with mental distress. Associations with green space visits were relatively consistent across seasons and countries but associations with blue space visits showed greater heterogeneity. Nature connectedness was also positively associated with positive well-being and negatively associated with mental distress and was, along with green space visits, associated with a lower likelihood of using medication for depression. By contrast inland-blue space visits were associated with a greater likelihood of using anxiety medication. Results highlight the benefits of multi-exposure, multi-response, multi-country studies in exploring complexity in nature-health associations.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015) · Journal of Statistical Software · doi:10.18637/jss.v067.i01 · Cited by 86,835
The WHO-5 well-being index: A systematic review of the literature
Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S., & Bech, P. (2015) · Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics · doi:10.1159/000376585 · Cited by 4,708
Hartig, T., Mitchell, R., de Vries, S., & Frumkin, H. (2014) · Annual Review of Public Health · doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182443 · Cited by 3,638
Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: theoretical and methodological guidance
Markevych, I., Schoierer, J., Hartig, T., Chudnovsky, A., Hystad, P., Dzhambov, A. M., de Vries, S., Triguero-Mas, M., Brauer, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J., et al. (2017) · Environmental Research · doi:10.1016/j.envres.2017.06.028 · Cited by 2,543
Self-citationGarnefski, N., Kraaij, V., Schroevers, M. J., & Somsen, G. A. (2008) · Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings · doi:10.1007/s10880-008-9136-5 · Cited by 2,479
Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective
Bratman, G. N., Anderson, C. B., Berman, M. G., Cochran, B., de Vries, S., Flanders, J., Folke, C., Frumkin, H., Gross, J. J., Hartig, T., et al. (2019) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax0903 · Cited by 2,001
Self-citationGreen space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?
Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., de Vries, S., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2006) · Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health · doi:10.1136/jech.2005.043125 · Cited by 1,976
Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature interactions
Soga, M., & Gaston, K. J. (2016) · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · doi:10.1002/fee.1225 · Cited by 1,802
Bethlehem, J. (2010) · International Statistical Review · doi:10.1111/j.1751-5823.2010.00112.x · Cited by 1,315
The impacts of nature experience on human cognitive function and mental health
Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., & Daily, G. C. (2012) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06400.x · Cited by 1,275
Self-citation
Research works printed but not linked: 7
- World Health Organization. Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders: Global Health Estimates (No. WHO/MSD/MER/2017.2) (World Health Organization, 2017).
- World Health Organisation. Urban Greenspace Interventions and Health: A Review of Impacts and Effectiveness (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2017).
- Foley, R. et al. (eds) Blue Space, Health and Wellbeing: Hydrophilia Unbounded (Routledge, 2019).
- Eurostat. European Health Interview Survey (EHIS Wave 2) Methodological manual (Publications Office of the European Union, 2013).
- Schultz, P. W. Assessing the structure of environmental concern: Concern for self, other people, and the biosphere. J. Environ. Psychol. 21, 1–13 (2001). · doi:10.1006/jevp.2001.0203
- Elliott, L. R. BlueHealth International Survey Methodology and Technical Report (2020). https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7AZU2.Accessed 8 April 2021. · doi:10.17605/osf.io/7azu2
- Her Majesty’s Government. A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment (Nobel House, 2018).
Cited by
Climate anxiety: What predicts it and how is it related to climate action?
Whitmarsh, L., Player, L., Jiongco, A., James, M., Williams, M., Marks, E., & Kennedy-Williams, P. (2022) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101866 · Cited by 401
The affective benefits of nature exposure
Bratman, G. N., Olvera‐Alvarez, H. A., & Gross, J. J. (2021) · Social and Personality Psychology Compass · doi:10.1111/spc3.12630 · Cited by 177
Self-citationPoulsen, M. N., Nordberg, C. M., Fiedler, A., DeWalle, J., Mercer, D., & Schwartz, B. S. (2022) · Landscape and Urban Planning · doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104282 · Cited by 55
Turunen, A. W., Halonen, J., Korpela, K., Ojala, A., Pasanen, T., Siponen, T., Tiittanen, P., Tyrväinen, L., Yli-Tuomi, T., & Lanki, T. (2023) · Occupational and Environmental Medicine · doi:10.1136/oemed-2022-108491 · Cited by 40
Self-citationDemographic, social, and environmental factors predicting Danish children’s greenspace use
Arvidsen, J., Schmidt, T., Præstholm, S., Andkjær, S., Olafsson, A. S., Nielsen, J. V., & Schipperijn, J. (2022) · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127487 · Cited by 18
Metadata
- Authors
- White, M. P., Elliott, L. R., Grellier, J., Economou, T., Bell, S., Bratman, G. N., Cirach, M., Gascon, M., Lima, M. L., Lõhmus, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Ojala, A., Roiko, A., Schultz, P. W., van den Bosch, M., & Fleming, L. E.
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2021-04-26
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 8903-8903
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3157179534
- Cited by
- 484
- References
- 51
- FWCI
- 24.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- Licence
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 (tdm)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 (vor)
- Funders
- Horizon 2020 (666773)
- Center for Conservation Biology, Stanford University
- ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon
- Natural Resources Institute Finland
- Griffith University and the University of the Sunshine Coast
- Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Associations between green/blue spaces and mental health across 18 countries. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41598-021-87675-0
- The paper
- White, M. P., Elliott, L. R., Grellier, J., Economou, T., Bell, S., Bratman, G. N., Cirach, M., Gascon, M., Lima, M. L., Lõhmus, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Ojala, A., Roiko, A., Schultz, P. W., van den Bosch, M., & Fleming, L. E. (2021). Associations between green/blue spaces and mental health across 18 countries. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87675-0
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.