Mental health: accepting our reliance on nature

I've been feeling quite down lately. Like most of us, I sometimes go through periods of my life where I find it harder to deal with everyday life, whether this manifests through panic attacks, depression symptoms or simply feeling down. I come from a country where mental health is spoken of much more openly than the U.K. Where I'm from, many, many (many!) people are going to therapy or to psychologists without hiding from it - we even exchange their numbers and recommend them like you would do for hairdressers. However, when I moved to the U.K, had my first conversations about mental health and shared my story about experiencing severe depression in my early 20s and seeing a psychologist for four years, people were looking at me as if I just said that I murdered someone (I'm only exaggerating slightly).

While the stance on mental health is slowly starting to shift globally (there is even a World Mental Health day!), it does remain taboo to speak about anxiety, panic attacks, depression and all the like. It also remains taboo to express that you're not well or that you're psychologically struggling. People usually don't feel comfortable speaking about this, anticipating that others will not take them seriously because their problems are deemed too small or unworthy.

Isle of Lewis, Scotland

So what's the connection with nature you may wonder?

Well, as I explained in my last post, I believe that if we spent more time in nature, we would overall be less stressed. Of course, it wouldn't suddenly solve all our problems but countless studies have shown the positive effects that nature has on our brain, therefore on our behaviours and the decisions we make. There are now words such as "ecotherapy" and being exposed and spending time in nature has been proven to reduce anxiety, depression and even obesity. Considering that people today take more antidepressants than ever before, I think this is worth exploring.

We have been evolving in nature for thousands of years. Today, we are only getting further away and estranged from it, especially in the Western world. It’s important to remember the bigger picture: we have been living like this (in a modern world) for a very small number of years compared to how long we’ve been on this earth for. In other words: we are not adapted to live away and disunited from Nature. Our bodies and our brains have evolved to respond and react to the environment around us, which for thousands of years was forests, sea, lakes and mountains, rather than buildings, cars and screens.

The societies we have built are not fit to respond to our needs. Our society expects us to expand whether or not we thrive. We need societies that make us thrive whether or not we expand.

Isle of Skye, Scotland

Why is it so hard to accept that we are part of nature and that we need it to thrive?

There are obviously a myriad of answers to this question. For the sake of length for this blog entry, I will only stick to two arguments: money and power.

We live in a society that was organised alongside capitalism, an economic system which has been founded on violence, domination and on the destruction of the natural world. The "Man vs. Nature" argument paved the way toward the structures we evolve in today: think about the conquest of the West, the intensive colonisation of many parts of the world or the way we have been treating nature in the U.K with only two percent of the country's original forests left. Two percent! We live in a world where Nature needs to be tamed which results in the destruction of ecosystems that are essential for our mental health (let alone our survival).

People are not happy, satisfied or even fulfilled in overcrowded, polluted environments and in the systems they evolve in. Recognising that we need more nature in our lives and that we are part of it, is accepting that most of the things we have created don't benefit us and our communities. Acknowledging that we are part of nature gives us a sense of belonging, which is a feeling that makes us joyful, fulfilled and gives us purpose.

The societies we have built are not fit to respond to our needs. Our society expects us to expand whether or not we thrive. We need societies that make us thrive whether or not we expand.

If you want to learn more about Capitalism and our climate I recommend This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate by Naomi Klein.

If you want to learn more about the effects of nature on our mental health, this study published in 2016 is very interesting.