The Impact of Greenery on Indigenous Mental Health in Canada
A Cross-sectional Study on Environmental Factors for Indigenous Mental Health
Authors
Tian Yi Xia1, Jana El Samad1, Vlad Marinescu1, Emma Nguyen Morneau1, Julie Lê André2
1Youreka Montreal, 2McGill University
Abstract
Recent research shows that residential greenness has a significant impact on mental health in urban areas and that residents of high socio-economic class are more likely to have more exposure to greenspace. As a result, this represents a factor contributing to health inequities to the detriment of marginalized populations such as Indigenous communities. Given that their culture is built upon a deep connection to nature and the negative impacts of colonization are still enduring in Canada, we hypothesize that the absence of exposure to greenery could worsen their mental health significantly more compared to the rest of the population in urban cities of Canada. For this reason, the objective of this study is to determine whether greenspace is a significant factor especially for Indigenous mental health, with a focus on Canada. By examining this relationship, we aim to provide insight on whether equitable urban greenspace housing accommodations are effective in reducing injust mental health disparities. For our study, the gathered data of mental health, Indigenous identity and region of residence of each participant was found in a Statistic Canada survey from 2018; on top of which was added their given geographic position’s NDVI values of 2018, assessing residential greenness. A Chi-squared test was used for our ordinal and categorical independent variables, and was run on 250 random samples for a countrywide analysis. We’ve observed that only a minority of samples demonstrated significant relationships between our independent variables and mental health. For this reason, our results disproves our hypothesis by suggesting there is no significant impact of greenery nor Indigenous identity on mental health, and more specifically, that greenery doesn’t level Indigenous identity more than the rest of the population in Canada in 2018. A possible interpretation of our results is that policies should shift their focus on implementing additional green spaces in cities to other alternatives in order to resolve health inequities in specific areas containing some in Canada. Our study also significantly contrasts with previous studies. For this reason, further research on the topic addressing our study’s limitations is necessary in order to establish whether our results are conclusive.
Results
Mental Health and Greenery: A Nationwide Map of Canada
P-values and Cramer’s V distributions
Paper
The Impact of Greenery on Indigenous Mental Health in Canada
References
- [1] Government of Canada, S. C. (2021, May 19). Ethnocultural and socioeconomic disparities in exposure to residential greenness within urban Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2021005/article/00001-eng.htm
- [2] Hatala, A. R., Njeze, C., Morton, D., Pearl, T., & Bird-Naytowhow, K. (2020). Land and nature as sources of health and resilience among Indigenous youth in an urban Canadian context : A photovoice exploration. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 538. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-08647-z
- [3] Barton, J., & Rogerson, M. (2017). The importance of greenspace for mental health. BJPsych International, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5663018/?report=classic
- [4] Logie, C. H., Lys, C. L., Sokolovic, N., Mackay, K. I., Donkers, H., Kanbari, A., Pooyak, S., & Loppie, C. (2021). Contextual factors associated with depression among Northern and Indigenous adolescents in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Global Mental Health (Cambridge, England), 8, e22. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2021.21