Queen's University Belfast

Academic Institute

QUB

Yes

E083

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed a threat to not only physical health but also mental health. According to a report (McIntyre & Lee, 2020a), the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in 3235 to 8164 additional suicides between 2020 and 2021 in North America. The natural environments such as green and blue spaces (e.g., parks, greenways, rivers, beaches) can act as a buffer between stressful life events and mental ill-health. The buffer effect indicates that natural environments may weaken the negative effect of stressful life events on health outcomes. What is less clear is whether use of green and blue spaces has changed during the pandemic due to the social distancing policy. Existing findings for green and blue spaces-health associations may not be valid for explaining the changes during this period, since previous findings are based on less stressful but higher daily mobility society. Existing literature has also shown that the effect of natural environments on health may be more pronounced for certain socioeconomic disadvantaged groups, which indicates that natural environments may have heterogeneous influence on different socioeconomic groups. Therefore, it is important to examine whether natural environments may reduce or exacerbate health inequalities among different socioeconomic groups during the pandemic. The aim of this study is to explore how natural environments exposure mitigate the effect of COVID-19 on mental ill-health and suicide risk using national longitudinal GP data, land use data, and machine learning techniques.

This proposed research involves three important topics for the COVID-19 pandemic including nature-based solutions, COVID-19-related health burden and health inequalities. This study will contribute to the existing knowledge of the direct health benefit of natural environments and the indirect buffer effect of natural environments on stressful life events such as the pandemic. Also, it enhances our understanding of the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health (including all-cause mortality, suicide, medications, hospital admissions). It further provides us with evidence of how natural environments can reduce the health inequalities during the pandemic. Hence, the results regarding the mitigation effect of natural environments on COVID-19-related mental health burden may give policy makers guidance on how to use nature-based solutions to reduce health inequalities during and after the pandemic and assist in future-proofing our towns and cities against other pandemics and large-scale (population level) stressful events.

03/03/2023

TRE