Brains in the city: Neurobiological effects of urbanization

Lambert, Kelly G.; Nelson, Randy J.; Jovanović, Tanja; Cerdá, Magdalena

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.04.007

Cited by 111 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 188 publications

(210 reference statements)

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“…Reductions in relevant mental healthcare costs have been estimated, at coarse scale, in a number of countries (Medibank Private, 2008;Myers and Patz, 2009;Myers et al, 2013;McKenzie et al, 2013;Australian Medical Association, 2014; National Heart Foundation of Australia, 2014;Hosie et al, 2015;ISCA/CEBR, 2015;Lambert et al, 2015). Improvements in workplace productivity (Korpela and Kinnunen, 2010;Ghermandi, 2015) may also include extensions to working life through reduced early mortality (Halonen et al, 2015), and reductions in youth unemployment payments (Hosie et al, 2015).…”

Section: Economic Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

Buckley

Brough

2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Exposure to nature yields a wide range of mental health benefits. Improvements in mental health have substantial economic value, through: reduced mental healthcare costs; improved workplace productivity; and reduced costs of antisocial behavior, both public, and private. These economic gains represent an unquantified ecosystem service attributable to conservation. Since most individual people, and hence most politicians and policy-makers, care more about the private good of individual health than the public good of ecosystem and biodiversity conservation, calculating the economic value of nature via its contributions to human mental health could prove influential in achieving conservation goals. Here, we review relevant literature, establish a framework for these calculations, and identify immediate information gaps and research priorities. Current estimates rely on assumptions, but are similar in scale to those from tourism and recreation, which do influence policy.

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Section: Economic Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

Buckley

Brough

2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…Unfortunately, this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future as a high number and proportion of the world's population will be living in urban areas (Seto et al, 2012). Indeed, urban living is associated with various adverse health consequences, such as high-fat diets, sedentary lifestyles, and increased levels of social and psychological stress and environmental pollutants (Clougherty et al, 2007, Lambert et al, 2015, Peer et al, 2003, Sodjinou et al, 2008). As a consequence, promoting health of urban populations has become one of the most challenging issues of the 21st century (Dye, 2008, Tzoulas et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis

Soga

Gaston

Yamaura

2017

Preventive Medicine Reports

469

311

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There is increasing evidence that gardening provides substantial human health benefits. However, no formal statistical assessment has been conducted to test this assertion. Here, we present the results of a meta-analysis of research examining the effects of gardening, including horticultural therapy, on health. We performed a literature search to collect studies that compared health outcomes in control (before participating in gardening or non-gardeners) and treatment groups (after participating in gardening or gardeners) in January 2016. The mean difference in health outcomes between the two groups was calculated for each study, and then the weighted effect size determined both across all and sets of subgroup studies. Twenty-two case studies (published after 2001) were included in the meta-analysis, which comprised 76 comparisons between control and treatment groups. Most studies came from the United States, followed by Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Studies reported a wide range of health outcomes, such as reductions in depression, anxiety, and body mass index, as well as increases in life satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community. Meta-analytic estimates showed a significant positive effect of gardening on the health outcomes both for all and sets of subgroup studies, whilst effect sizes differed among eight subgroups. Although Egger's test indicated the presence of publication bias, significant positive effects of gardening remained after adjusting for this using trim and fill analysis. This study has provided robust evidence for the positive effects of gardening on health. A regular dose of gardening can improve public health.

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“…Fourth, the identification of causal risk and protective factors of relevance to the promotion of happiness is hindered by confounding which may be accentuated by the complexity of the happiness construct. For example, with more than half of the world's population living in an urban environment, it is relevant to understand the influence of components of life in the city on happiness and well-being (Lambert et al 2015). Yet, urban life goes along with traffic noise and air pollution, altered social networks, artificial light pollution, lack of and access to different types of greenspace, and altered lifestyle.…”

Section: The Challenges In Identifying the Modifiable Determinants Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Happiness and its molecular fingerprints

Probst‐Hensch

2017

Int Rev Econ

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Happiness and well-being are in part heritable, but modifiable traits. The promotion of well-being and happiness, much like the primary prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCD), will become increasingly important in a world that is facing an NCD epidemic due to demographic aging and urbanization. The costs for the often lifelong treatment of NCDs are already high and may increase further with the arrival of expensive personalized medicine. The effective promotion of happiness at the individual and population level in order to guide policy requires a causal and mechanistic understanding of its modifiable determinants. With more than half of the world's population living in cities, it becomes, for example, important to understand how environmental, social, and lifestyle characteristics of urban life influence well-being. Yet, the correlation between many of these factors and the fact that they act in concert poses a large challenge in causal inference. The -omics biomarkers which form a pillar of personalized medicine are at the same time essential research instruments of modern-day observational epidemiology. The paper discusses how they can be applied to overcome the challenges researchers face in studies on the association of complex risk and protective patterns with specific well-being phenotypes and their relation to diseases. Important concepts are discussed in the context of well-being that were recently developed by epidemiologists to stimulate more investments into the understanding of the modifiable part of health (e.g., Exposome; Meet-in-the-Middle; Mendelian Randomization) to match the huge investments that went into genetic research.

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Brains in the city: Neurobiological effects of urbanization

Cited by 111 publications

References 188 publications

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis

Happiness and its molecular fingerprints

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