More and more research is demonstrating how beneficial green spaces can be for human health, particularly in metropolitan environments. Now, a new study specifically looks into how the green spaces planned for Barcelona, Spain, could benefit the city. The good news is that just a 5 percent addition to green space shows potential improvements in mental health for more than 30,000 people.
The city’s Eixos Verds Plan for Barcelona’s Eixample district is currently underway to introduce more green corridors in the city by converting streets into green recreational areas.
To determine potential impacts on mental health, the research team created a baseline of green spaces based on Barcelona in 2015 and compared it to the proposed green spaces plan. From there, the researchers looked at exposure data and mental health risk estimates for people in Barcelona, finally calculating preventable cases.
Their findings show the Eixos Verds Plan will create an average increase of 5.67% of green area, ultimately preventing 31,353 cases of self-perceived poor mental health. The researchers also estimated that the added green space could reduce visits to mental health specialists by 16,800 and could reduce cases of antidepressant use by 13,375. The green space plan could add up to annual mental health-related cost savings of more than 45 million euros ($50m), according to the authors.
“What we found was that - even though we’re only increasing the green [space] by about 5 or 6 percent - you get quite a considerable reduction in the number of cases of mental health problems,” Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, co-author of the paper, told The Guardian.
The study was published in the journal Environment International and led by Barcelona Institute for Global Health.
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