Image by: Simon Greener
Go Wild and Connect with Nature to Boost your Mental Health
This week is National Mental Health Awareness Week and a timely opportunity to remind ourselves that spending time in the natural environment improves our mental wellbeing. Seeing birds near our homes, walking through green spaces filled with wild flowers, and along rivers that are clean and clear reduces stress, fatigue, anxiety and depression.
The evidence on the link between spending time in nature and our mental health is incontrovertible [1] and is the reason why The Wildlife Trusts look after and connect people to places and activities where they feel happier, uplifted, less stressed and connected to other people. They do this in many ways up and down the UK, and one great way that I would encourage anyone and everyone to join in, is to sign up today for the 30 Days Wild Campaign.
Every June, The Wildlife Trusts challenge you to do something wild every day. That’s 30 simple, fun and exciting Random Acts of Wildness. You get a free ’30 Days Wild’ pack of goodies which includes a wallchart, a poster, wildflower seeds, an interactive booklet and some stickers to help you go wild to help you plan your wild month, plus lots of ideas from Northumberland Wildlife Trust to inspire you to stay wild all throughout June (and beyond!). You can sign up for yourself and your family, and this year there are also free packs for you to sign up your school or your workplace and even a pack for care homes.
In my earlier career I worked in public health and much of my work focussed on promoting mental health and emotional health and wellbeing. I have seen, both professionally and personally, the huge impact that poor mental health can have on individuals and families and certainly I believe strongly that ‘there is no health without mental health’. So, for me, the work The Wildlife Trusts do to connect people to nature, and to improve their mental health, is especially important.
30 Days Wild is a brilliant way to help people to focus on that important daily connection with nature and will help to improve your mental health, and the mental health of those around you, and also helps you to do your bit for wildlife along the way, so come on, sign up and join us this June:
[1] Evidence statement on the links between the natural environment and human health (The University of Exeter and Defra, 2017).