Birdwatching can help improve students' mental health and reduce distress

People who have nature-based experiences report higher levels of happiness and less psychological distress than those who don't, according to a new study. Bird watching, in particular, had promising results, leading to greater subjective well-being and less distress than more general nature exposure, such as walking. This finding is encouraging for college students, who are most likely to suffer from mental health problems, as birdwatching is an easy activity to engage in.

“There's a lot of research on well-being through the pandemic, suggesting that young adults and college-age children are struggling the most,” said the study's corresponding author, University of North Carolina School of Forestry and Forestry Sciences. said Nils Peterson, professor of environmental resources. Carolina State University. “If you think about students and graduate students in particular, they seem to be a group that is struggling in terms of accessing and benefiting from nature.

“Birdwatching is one of the most ubiquitous ways humans interact with wildlife around the world, and university campuses provide a place to access that activity, even in urban areas.”

To quantitatively measure subjective well-being, researchers used a five-question survey known as the World Health Organization's Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5). The tool asks participants to assign a rating from 0 to 5 to statements about happiness, depending on how often they have felt that way in the past two weeks. For example, if given the prompt “I feel calm and relaxed,'' participants would mark 0 for “never'' and 5 for “always.'' Researchers can calculate a raw happiness score by simply adding up the five responses. Zero is the worst possible quality of life and 25 is the best possible quality of life.

The researchers divided the participants into three groups: a control group, a group assigned five nature walks, and a group assigned five 30-minute birdwatching sessions. All three groups improved their WHO-5 scores, but the birdwatching group started lower and ended higher than his other two groups. Using the STOP-D, a similar questionnaire designed to measure psychological distress, researchers found that participants on both birdwatching and nature walks showed decreased distress, while engagement in nature showed a decrease in distress. They also found that it performed better than the

This study differs from some previous studies in that it compared the effects of birdwatching and interaction with nature to a control group rather than to a group more actively experiencing negative conditions. said Peterson.

“One of the studies we reviewed in the paper compared people who listen to birds to people who listen to traffic, but that's not really a neutral comparison,” Peterson said. Ta. “We had a neutral control to leave people alone and compare it to something positive.”

This study supports the idea that birdwatching can help improve mental health and opens many avenues for future research. For example, future research could examine why birdwatching helps people feel better, or the moderating effects of race, gender, and other factors.

paper, “Birdwatching is associated with improved psychological well-being on college campuses: A pilot-scale study” is published. Environmental psychology. Co-authors include Lincoln Larson, Aaron Hipp, Justin M. Beal, Katherine LeRose, Hannah Desrochers, Summer Lauder, Sophia Torres, Nathan A. Tarr, Kayla Stokes, Katherine Stevenson, and Katherine・Includes L. Martin, all from North Carolina.

-Pitchford-

Note to editors: A summary of the study follows:

“Birdwatching is associated with improved psychological well-being on college campuses: A pilot-scale study.”

author: Nils Peterson, Lincoln Larson, Aaron Hipp, Justin Beal, Katherine LeRose, Hannah Desroches, Summer Lauder, Sophia Torres, Nathan Tarr, Kayla Stokes, Katherine Stevenson, Katherine Martin

release date: April 26, 2024 environmental psychology

Doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102306

Abstract: Exposure to nature is known to improve human health, but birdwatching, one of the most common forms of interaction with nature, is particularly important on campuses where the risk of experiencing mental health problems is high. Little is known about how it affects psychological well-being among the population. In this study, 112 campus participants participated in a step-wise design experiment in which five weekly birdwatching sessions lasting more than 30 minutes (n = 62) and nature walks (n = 77) were associated with lower self-reported subjective well-being. (WHO-5). Psychological distress (STOP-D) levels compared to control group (n = 81). All relationship orientations supported the hypothesis that nature-based experiences, especially bird watching, would increase well-being and reduce distress. These results build on preliminary evidence of a causal relationship between birdwatching and well-being and highlight the value of considering well-being effects for specific types of activities in nature, and on a larger scale. We highlight the need for future research with diverse samples.