Love & Money is a MarketWatch series looking at how our relationship with money impacts our relationships with significant others, friends and family. Children who grow up in less green environments have up to 55% higher risk of developing mental disorders later in life than those who grow up in greener spots, according to a study from Aarhus University in Denmark and published this week in the peer-reviewed American Journal PNAS.
The result: Those who lived in capital cities with the least green space tended to have the highest risks of mental disorders, while those in rural areas with more green space had the lowest risk. This was true even controlling for socioeconomic factors and parental history of mental illness. “The risk of developing a mental disorder decreases incrementally the longer you have been surrounded by green space from birth and up to the age of 10,” says study author Kristine Engemann, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Bioscience and the National Centre for Register-based Research at Aarhus University. “Green space throughout childhood is, therefore, extremely important.”Of course, this study does not prove causality.
Overall, there’s a large body of evidence that suggests urban environments are correlated with higher mental illness. “Nearly a century of research has shown higher risk of mental disorder among persons living in urban versus rural areas,” according to a study published in the journal Epigenetics, which looks at the genetic origins of disease and ill-health.