Evidence

Community woodland visits increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, and people developed their interest and appreciation for woodlands, resulting in them placing significantly more value on connecting with nature.

This report, including case studies, demonstrates the value of investing in parks and the role that parks play in community and environmental wellbeing.

This report highlights the major role that nature plays in health, going beyond the mere aesthetic value to understanding the nourishing value of nature. It argue that, for healthy people and a healthy planet, we must stop treating nature as a service or commodity. Instead, we must have a mutually dependent and beneficial relationship.

This report contains information that reinforces the case for green health prescribing, setting out a framework for ways to embed this throughout the system. It was based on consultation with people with direct experience of receiving green prescriptions; providers of green and blue health activities; and other stakeholders. It also addresses the context of people affected by Covid-19.

An overview of the evidence about equity issues in accessing urban nature. It explores the benefits of urban nature, the barriers that some groups face in accessing it, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and take-homes for the urban nature sector, including policymakers.

This handbook explains how prescribing nature can be used to support mental health, with evidence-based suggestions for developing and implementing a high-quality scheme. It is primarily aimed at providers of group, nature-based interventions that target common mental health conditions, and that can be delivered via social prescribing schemes. It is also aimed at link workers, general practitioners, commissioners and researchers with an interest in social prescribing.

An overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health. It is targeted at readers who do not have extensive experience with the links between nature and health.

This report produced for Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 covers the state of research on mental health and nature connection and reports on the Mental Health Foundation’s findings on nature connection during the pandemic.

The theme of Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 was ‘Nature’ and this briefing proposes priority policy areas for England in the field of nature and mental health. It discusses ways that we benefit from connection to the natural world and highlights areas where policy needs to be developed, in order to include nature as a key areas of priority when designing spaces, promoting wellbeing and improving livelihoods.

This study looked at how people’s relationship with nature changed during the first Covid-19 lockdown and demonstrates the increased importance of local nature for people in a post-pandemic world.