EditorialGreen space and substance use and addiction: A new frontier
Section snippets
The missing link
There have been two fundamental strategies in studies investigating the association between exposure to green space and mental health: (i) to evaluate mental health with respect to specific behavioral and emotional outcomes; and (ii) to evaluate mental health more broadly in terms of general well-being. Both streams of research have identified positive associations between exposure to green space and mental health, but have favored a limited range of mental health outcomes (Astell-Burt and
The green space connection
Although no studies have explicitly examined the relationship between exposure to green space and substance use and addiction, related evidence suggests that further investigation is warranted. For example, research from environmental psychology has documented improvements in substance-abuse behavior and ideation with nature-assisted therapies (Annerstedt et al., 2011, Richards and Kafami, 1999). These therapies range from engagement with elements of natural environments, like plants and
Future research
Although all areas of green space research share a similar set of challenges, there are two priority considerations for future research. The first issue pertains to measurement of exposure. Green space is routinely captured through a vegetation index that attaches a ‘greenness score’ to a predefined geographical area (Beyer et al., 2014, Dzhambov et al., 2018, Kondo et al., 2018). The problem with this methodology is that it tells us very little about other meaningful characteristics of those
Looking ahead
The foregoing discussion points to the necessity of understanding the effects of varying levels of exposure to different types of green space on substance use behavior. Substance use and addiction represent an important element of mental health that has received little attention in the green space literature thus far. Future research allows for a more complete understanding of these effects and has the opportunity to guide policy in meaningful ways. A priority for future research is to better
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2023, New Ideas in PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Finally, recent research has suggested that environmental variables are potentially relevant for preventing substance use and mental health issues. Indeed, cumulative evidence links environmental and social variables such as neighbourhood socioeconomic status (Karriker-Jaffe, 2013), presence of green spaces (Martin et al., 2019; Wiley et al., 2020), density of betting venues (Badji et al., 2020), among others, to severity of addiction. Fig. 1 shows a graphical representation of the proposed model.
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2022, Environmental ResearchCitation Excerpt :Research has documented beneficial associations between green space and self-perceived health (Dadvand et al., 2016; de Vries et al., 2003; Maas et al., 2006; Mitchell and Popham, 2007), reduced mortality (Gascon et al., 2016a, 2016b; van den Berg et al., 2015; Villeneuve et al., 2012), and mental health (Tillmann et al., 2018; Astell-Burt et al., 2014; Beyer et al., 2014; Bratman et al., 2019; Nutsford et al., 2013). Given this growing body of knowledge, it is somewhat surprising that substance use outcomes have been rarely explored in green space and health research (Wiley et al., 2020). Indeed, substance use represents an important category of health-related behaviour with far reaching influence – it is highly prolific, it contributes to a disproportionate burden of disease, and it contributes to a host of economic deficits (Degenhardt et al., 2012; Degenhardt et al., 2013; Griswold et al., 2018; NIDA, 2020; Rehm et al., 2007).
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