Green is the colour of life, renewal, nature, and energy. Green has healing power and is the most relaxing colour for the human eye to view. Green helps alleviate anxiety, depression, and nervousness. Green is new growth, rebirth, and harmony. The practice of spending time in the green is believed to lower stress and contribute to beneficial changes in the body. According to research, adolescents in urban communities may be less aggressive if they live in neighbourhoods with more greenery, such as parks, golf courses, or fields.
Research has demonstrated that our social environment—the homes, workplaces, and friendships we maintain—has a significant impact on our conduct. On the other hand, little is known about how a person’s outside environment, like the vegetation in their community, influences their behaviour.
According to research that will appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) in July 2016, teenagers who live in urban neighbourhoods with more green space—such as parks, fields, or golf courses—may exhibit less aggressive behaviour.
Research has demonstrated that our social environment—the homes, workplaces, and friendships we maintain—has a significant impact on our conduct.
On the other hand, not much is known about how a person’s outside environment, such as the vegetation in their neighbourhood, influences their behaviour.
Greenery surrounding the home could reduce aggressive behaviours
To determine whether having more greenery around the house could lessen aggressive behaviour in a group of Southern California teenagers who live in urban areas, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) recently carried out the first longitudinal study in this area.
The group, which was comprised of members from the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences’ Department of Psychology and the USC Keck School of Medicine’s Department of Preventive Medicine, tracked 1,287 teenagers between the ages of 9 and 18.
Every two to three years, they evaluated the aggressive behaviours of the teenagers by asking parents if their child had threatened or physically attacked someone, damaged property, or displayed other actions that were similar.
The researchers then used satellite data to determine the amount of greenery in the teenagers’ communities based on where they lived.
According to the study, children aged 9 to 18 who lived in neighbourhoods with greater greenery had noticeably fewer violent tendencies than children who lived in neighbourhoods with less greenery.
Short-term and long-term effects of greenspaces
Reduced aggressive behaviours were linked to both short-term (one to six months) and long-term (one to three years) exposure to green space within 1,000 metres of residential areas.
The behavioural benefits of green space were equivalent to two to two and a half years of maturation for adolescents.
The research also discovered that the results were unaffected by variables like age, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, parent’s educational background, occupation, income level, marital status, and whether their mother smoked throughout her pregnancy or suffered from depression.
Furthermore, these advantages are applied to boys and girls of all ages, races, and nationalities as well as to individuals from various socioeconomic backgrounds and neighbourhoods with varying standards of quality.
Increasing neighbourhood greenery, an effective alternative intervention strategy
“Identifying effective measures to reduce aggressive and violent behaviours in adolescents is a pressing issue facing societies worldwide,” said Diana Younan, MPH, doctoral candidate at the Keck School of Medicine.
“It is important that we target aggressive behaviours early on. Our study provides new evidence that increasing neighbourhood greenery may be an effective alternative intervention strategy for an environmental public health approach that has not been considered yet.”
The results of the study lead USC researchers to hypothesise that a 12% drop in clinical cases of aggressive behaviour among California teenage residents of urban regions may be attained by increasing the amount of greenery that is often found in urban settings.
Researchers draw the conclusion that these findings are consistent with the positive effects of green space in reducing aggressive behaviour in young people residing in urban areas.
This new information would strongly suggest that more research be done to determine whether enhancing the amount of green space in residential communities will indeed discourage aggressive behaviour in teenagers.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Elsevier. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Diana Younan, Catherine Tuvblad, Lianfa Li, Jun Wu, Fred Lurmann, Meredith Franklin, Kiros Berhane, Rob McConnell, Anna H. Wu, Laura A. Baker, Jiu-Chiuan Chen. Environmental Determinants of Aggression in Adolescents: Role of Urban Neighborhood Greenspace. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2016; 55 (7): 591 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2016.05.002
Page citation:
Elsevier. “Greenery in Neighborhoods May Reduce Adolescent Aggressive Behavior.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 June 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160628072253.htm>.
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