SANITY AND URBANITY BLOG
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Mental health can be seen as a sliding scale with disease on one end, optimal condition on the other. Most of us sit somewhere in between, hopefully closer to the optimal side. Things happen in life that tip that scale towards one end or the other, many of those things being in our environment. An urban environment has the possibility of pushing us in either direction. The stigma commonly associated with mental illness may stem from the idea that it is an internal problem that the person can change themselves. Yet the impact that the natural and built environment has on our mental health is palpable and often out of our control. Everyone has symptoms of poor mental health at times. Here are some examples of ways that cities can cause common mental health symptoms:
These are all symptoms of an unhealthy mental state which can be caused or exacerbated by urban conditions. Yet this is no reason to truck out to the burbs. Cities offer extensive benefits for our wellbeing, which we can experience all the time:
Improving the urban environment by integrating nature, social connection and stress-relieving elements can both relieve the negative symptoms and increase the positive interactions we have in the urban environment. Both the negative symptoms and positive benefits of urbanism are things every one of us can experience. Those of us who have the means to get away or change our environment can usually prevent the negative symptoms from going from a few bad days into a disorder, by putting ourselves in more frequent contact with the positive experiences. But many urban residents don’t have the ability to change their environment. By advocating for urban designers, planners and architects to collaborate with health professionals to design urban environments that promote our mental wellbeing, we can improve the effect the urban environment has on everyone. Comments are closed.
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Sanity and Urbanity
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