Community Gardening: Stress, Well-Being, and Resilience Potentials

Abstract

The financial and health burdens of stress associated with increased urbanization have led to a demand for mental health enhancement strategies. While some extant literature details mental health benefits of community gardening, a coherent narrative on the construct of resilience and its relationship with the mental health benefits of community gardening is lacking. The present study examined the relationship between community gardening and a number of mental health benefits, in the forms of subjective well-being, stress, resilience potentials, and resilience factors (self-esteem, optimism, and openness). A total of 111 residents in Singapore completed a survey. Results from Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and Pearson’s correlation analyses show that, after controlling for age and levels of connection to nature, community gardeners reported significantly higher levels of subjective well-being than individual/home gardeners and non-gardeners, indicating that engagement in community gardening may be superior to individual/home gardening or non-gardening outdoor activities. Community gardeners reported higher levels of resilience and optimism than the non-gardening control group. These novel results indicate some potential for mental health benefits in urban environments, specifically in terms of subjective well-being and resilience. These findings have implications for future research in clinical psychology, mental health promotion, and policy.

Promoting Urban Agriculture and Its Opportunities and Challenges—A Global Review

“…The highest record model was community gardens, followed by home gardens (Figure 3). The community garden is a piece of common land gardened collectively by peo who grow their produce on multiple individual plots [25,26]. The allotment garden is The community garden is a piece of common land gardened collectively by people who grow their produce on multiple individual plots [25,26].…”

“…The community garden is a piece of common land gardened collectively by peo who grow their produce on multiple individual plots [25,26]. The allotment garden is The community garden is a piece of common land gardened collectively by people who grow their produce on multiple individual plots [25,26]. The allotment garden is its sub-category, in which the plots of land are tended individually by plot holders [27].…”

“…Government support for urban agriculture practices was recorded in only 16 articles (Table S1). These supports include institutional support (e.g., interagency collaboration and linking with municipal council projects) [5,37,48], integrating urban agriculture into urban planning [26,49,50], creating legislation for urban agriculture [33,51], providing irrigation facilities [52,53], providing suitable lands [47,50,53], providing gardening material [50], providing training [52], informal political support [34,47], market creation [43], providing grants [54], and support for guerilla gardening [55]. This support had given through municipal councils or relevant government agencies.…”

“…Regarding the special benefited groups, only 16 articles [27,28,31,33,34,36,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] have recorded such specific benefited groups from particular urban agriculture practices, which include older adults, migrants, low-income people, disabled people, people with mental disorders, school children, cancer patients, and women (Table S1). However, the Health and emotional benefits were recorded more than twice as much in developed countries [17,26,27,36,[38][39][40]46,47,49,50,52,53,[56][57][58][59][60][61] compared to developing countries [29,59,[62][63][64][65][66] (Table 2). The top three health and emotional sub-categories recorded in developed countries are food nutrition and quality, connection with nature, physical activity, and mental relaxation.…”

Anxiety Levels among Healthcare Professionals during Covid-19 Pandemic: A Multifactorial Study

“…Anxiety has been identified as one of the top-ranked mental issues among health care professionals that can dynamically influence individual performances. Different external factors like working hours at the hospital, personal relationships, financial problems and certain other extraneous factors including medical illness of family members can contribute to elevated stress levels (Koay et al, 2020). It is pertinent to mention here that anxiety and depression levels generally prevailing among the population worldwide (Fonagy et al, 2016).…”