Contact with nature is an antidepressant, says psychologist – 07/14/2023 – Environment

Still little known on the other side of the planet, forest bathing (“shinrin-yoku”) is a therapy that has been introduced to the public health service in Japan since the 1980s. In Brazil, psychologist Marco Aurélio Carvalho, director of the Instituto Brasileiro de Ecopsicologia, was the guide for the first forest bath held in the country.

In 2021, the institute signed an agreement with Fiocruz (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation) to research the role of this therapy in biomes such as the Atlantic forest and the Amazon rainforest.

The practice is simple —walking through nature and contemplating it—, but the benefits are shown to be great in studies from the last four decades.

“The more time passes, the more it becomes clear that nature, the forest, even a single tree, already causes a very important restorative effect on the organism”, says Carvalho.

“Research at Stanford University revealed that trees have effects on our brain, including regions associated with depression. In other words, contact with trees is an antidepressant”, he highlights.

The psychologist is also part of Rede Saúde e Natureza Brasil, which prepared a manifesto so that the government recognizes the correlation between these two areas and generates public policies to promote them. For Carvalho, the SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde) should adopt, as Japan did, forest bathing among its therapies.

Another lack in current times is that of spaces for us to deal with the anxiety generated by climate change, the so-called eco-anxiety. Or, at the other extreme, with the denial of this reality.

“We realize that people have information, but assimilation of information does not. Information goes to a dimension below consciousness. We call this denial or deflection”, he explains.

“And the more this reality is denied, the more weakened is the political strength needed to pressure the authorities to do what they have to do”, he adds.

For ecopsychology, ecological wisdom is part of human consciousness. What does that mean?

This is a finding when we look at the history of our species and recognize that we managed to survive in the face of the limitations of our own body in different environments, because we knew how to read nature and adapt to it. This is inherent in the human psyche.

As the biologist Edward Wilson said [1929-2021], is a sense of affiliation to this whole web of life. He called it biophilia, that is, a positive relationship, including affection. And it is very clear to us that we are experiencing a lack of this ecological wisdom.

What are the scientifically proven benefits of forests and trees for human health?

Since the 1980s, research has been emerging that reveals the positive role of contact with nature in maintaining and restoring health, both physical and psychological.

A famous survey carried out in a hospital in Pennsylvania (USA) revealed that patients who recovered from surgeries on the same floor of a hospital, but in two different outpatient clinics, had different recoveries. They had less pain, less need for analgesics, when they were recovering in one of the rooms with a window to a forest, while in the other ambulatory the window faced a brick wall.

The act of seeing life in the forests has an effect on our body. Later research showed, in particular, that the practice of forest bathing is a very powerful reconnective experience. Other effects were revealed, for example, an increase in the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, relaxation reactions, regulation of blood pressure and heartbeat. The level of cortisol, a hormone normally associated with stress, decreases from contact with trees.

We also discovered that the immune system is highly stimulated by the presence of trees, with an increase in the activity of more than 50% of the so-called k cells, responsible for the destruction of tumors.

And Stanford University research revealed that trees have effects on our brain, including in regions associated with depression. That is, contact with trees is an antidepressant.

So, the more time passes, the more it becomes clear that nature, the forest, even a single tree, already causes a very important restorative effect on the organism.

In 2021, the Brazilian Institute of Ecopsychology and Fiocruz signed a partnership to research the practice of forest bathing. What is the scope of this agreement?

In 2021, we entered into this agreement to see what happens when you practice forest bathing in Brazilian biomes.

We know what happens in foreign biomes, especially in forests in Japan, but we are interested in knowing how it is in the Atlantic forest, the Amazon forest, the cerrado, the pampa and also in other manifestations of nature, such as beaches, which are not exactly a forest. Finally, we want to know how contact with Brazilian nature affects health.

The agreement goes beyond research, it also has a campaign with public bodies in the health area. A group of researchers and activists called Rede Saúde e Natureza Brasil prepared a manifesto so that public authorities recognize the power between these two areas and feel encouraged by scientific evidence to generate public policies.

What can be proposed for public policies in the area of ​​preventive medicine? And how would it work in Brazil, where not everyone has access to nature in big cities?

Practices such as forest baths could be offered by the SUS, as part of integrative and complementary health practices.

And there is an international movement towards the recognition of the importance of urban forests, for the care of those that already exist, but also for the creation of other forests within metropolises and cities in general.

It is also important to remember that, for a child, a small forest is a big forest.

What is your diagnosis for the kind of collective denial of contemporary society in relation to the climate-environmental crisis?

We live in a situation that has worsened in recent decades, but which has been announced since the 1970s. Despite the international climate conferences, despite the fact that science has regularly generated reports that are warnings about the future, despite the media, for most people, it’s like it doesn’t exist.

We realize that information people have, but the assimilation of information does not. Information goes to a dimension below consciousness.

We call this negation or deflection. And the more this reality is denied, the weaker the political force needed to pressure the authorities to do what they have to do becomes.

How do you get people out of this state of denial and into action?

Just allow people access to feelings they rarely share with others. When they look at their feelings about thousands of football fields burned in the Amazon, climate change, species extinction, we will see that everyone has anxiety, sadness, sometimes anger about what is happening.

It turns out that “business as usual” [o cenário habitual da vida] It demands such great attention to the demands of survival that there are few opportunities to stop to look and frankly talk about the dimension of what we are living and feeling about all of this. There are still very few opportunities for people to stop and elaborate on how they perceive this civilizational moment.

But when they stop, I’ve never met anyone in all these years who didn’t have very strong feelings about it, of insecurity, of fear, of sadness. That is why this work of ecopsychology is so important today.

Eco-anxiety is affecting the daily lives of many young people. A survey shows that 6 out of 10 feel very concerned about the climate crisis. How is this question expressed in young people in Brazil?

In Brazil, we still have little information, but this is human nature. What these researches are showing is a dynamic of human functioning, what happens when what we perceive we don’t integrate, we don’t assimilate. What we perceive, let’s put it that way, but don’t know that we perceive, generates anxiety.

When you go to see a very anxious person, they are not always experiencing an immediate risk situation. It’s your history, or traumas, or an accumulation of unresolved situations that will generate this increase in the level of anxiety.

In your view, how to promote a cultural transition towards new futures?

I like to think in metaphor terms of what happens to a person in psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, what we do is stop to look and recognize what we feel, recognize how things are. And I feel like that’s extremely important on a collective level as well.

We need to get out of the increasingly accelerated pace of our lives, get back to doing things within nature’s time, with a certain degree of tranquility. Years ago, there was a group in England who were proposing that, at least for an hour, all the lights be turned off so people could see the stars again.

I think it’s very important to have spaces for exchange, sharing, where we can talk openly about what life in society is like today, what it’s like to deal with this digital universe, what’s happening to our children. They are the ones who suffer the most from the lack of green spaces.

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Marco Aurélio Bilibio Carvalho, 63

Clinical psychologist, president of the International Society of Ecopsychology and director of the Brazilian Institute of Ecopsychology. He is a member of the Brazilian Association of Gestalt-Therapy and the Jungian Association of Brazil. He acts as a teacher of the forest bath therapy. He has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and culture and a doctorate in sustainable development from UnB (University of Brasília).

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UNDERSTAND THE SERIES

Planeta em Transe is a series of reports and interviews with new actors and experts on climate change in Brazil and worldwide. This special coverage also accompanied responses to the climate crisis in the 2022 elections and at COP27 (UN conference held in November in Egypt). The project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.