Two new studies link declines in outdoor activities and park use during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to reductions in mental health measures for teens and young adults from middle school through college.

The studies build evidence for the mental health benefits of nature’s medicine—and the potential hazards of restricting access, researchers say.

“This is an opportunity for anyone concerned about the health and well-being of future generations to focus on the power of parks when it comes to mental health promotion, and to figure out what we can do to make sure all segments of the population have access to enjoy the health-related benefits that parks can provide,” says Lincoln Larson, an associate professor of parks, recreation, and tourism management at North Carolina State University.

Larson is the lead author of a study looking at factors linked to emotional distress in college students. Published in the journal Environmental Research, the study involved a survey of 1,280 college students at four large public universities in the United States, including at NC State.

Researchers wanted to understand why and how students’ outdoor recreation and park use changed in March through May of 2020, and how that related to their mental health. They asked students to rate their use of parks and other outdoor spaces and their levels of emotional distress before and during the pandemic.

They found 54% of students said they reduced their park use during the pandemic, and about two-thirds reduced outdoor activities. College students more worried about COVID-19 were more likely to limit outdoor recreation. Students who identified as Asian or Black were more likely to limit their park use than students of other ethnicities or races.

“It is becoming apparent that historically marginalized populations are having an even harder time enjoying the benefits that come from outdoor recreation during the pandemic,” Larson says.

Emotional distress was “widespread,” researchers report. Reducing park use was one of the factors linked with higher levels of emotional distress, along with knowing someone who had COVID-19, and other factors. Students who lived in counties with larger areas of national or state parks per capita were likely to report lower levels of emotional distress.

“Reducing park use was one of the stronger predictors of emotional distress; people who stopped using parks suffered worse mental health impacts in the early stages of the pandemic,” Larson says. “Other studies have shown that any contact with nature, whether or not it’s in a park, can be beneficial.

Read the full article about outdoor activities and mental health by Laura Oleniacz at Futurity.