Don’t just stop to smell the roses — make sure you listen to the birds and look at the trees, too. A new study out of Carleton University has shown that is associated with positive mental health. It builds on a wave of research that shows how significantly exposure to nature can benefit your mental and physical health — decreasing stress, depression and anxiety, along with rates of diabetes, strokes and heart disease.
But the Carleton study — which analyzed data across 36 Canadian cities to show bird diversity increased the probability of good mental health by nearly seven per cent, and tree diversity increased it by more than five per cent — helps demonstrate a tie between mental health and biodiversity, too. “We were surprised that (bird and tree diversity were) significant at all, because there’s so many different factors that go into influencing people’s mental health in a city,” said Rachel Buxton, a professor at Carleton and lead author of the study. “When we compared it to things like employment or education or marital status or smoking or drinking, we thought that it just wouldn’t come out as important .
.. We were surprised it came out significant at all.
” Some Toronto birders are excited at the sweeping name changes, hoping it will make birds more relatable. The study, published this month, used data from eBird, a crowdsourced app managed by Birds Canada, and a national forestry inventory to measure species diversity across cities including To.