Study: Forest Bathing improves symptoms of depression

There have been numerous studies on the effects of forest bathing on depression and this study reviews some of these.

They used a stick criteria including participants being over the age of 18, studies having at least one control group and that the paper had been published in either English or Korean before 2016.

After reviewing nearly 7000 papers - those that met this criteria and were included in this particular review were just 28 papers; all of which were conducted in Korea, Japan and China other than one in England.

The measures that were used in these studies included HRV ( heart rate variability) - this is a physiological marker that reflects the function of our nervous systems ( both sympathetic and parasympathetic) and is also a well established indicator of stress and depression. A significant reduction in HRV was observed among patients with depression as opposed to the control group.

Other measures also included natural killer cell activity, salivary amylase activity, salivary and serum cortisol immunoglobulin concentrations and urinary adrenaline levels.

The conclusion was that this review demonstrated that forest therapy is an emerging and effective intervention for decreasing adults’ depressive symptoms.

Future studies assessing the long-term effect of forest therapy on depression using rigorous study designs are needed.

Read the full study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5369157/

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