Did you know that parks or green spaces and physical and mental health are connected? Parks and other green spaces offer a variety of benefits to their users by promoting physical activity and offering opportunities to connect with nature. The Hoosier Health and Wellness Alliance would like to help communities understand the potential that parks space have to bring local populations together and create an overall healthier community both mentally and physically. Overall, parks create an openly accessible environment that supports being physically active or improving your overall health and fitness. These spaces are also good for nurturing a positive and healthy mental state. Spending time outside, in nature, or in a public park can help reduce stress, reduce anxiety and depression, and even reduce angry and aggressive behaviors. Additionally, spending a significant amount of time outside, like at parks, can also help your mental health by decreasing your risk of dementia, improving your brain function, improving your memory, reducing mental fatigue, improving concentration and patience, increasing creativity, increasing your self-esteem, and much more!
There are numerous benefits to being active and physical activity should be an essential part of everyone’s everyday routine. Some of the benefits of being physically active, that further emphasize its importance, include: lowering your risk of chronic diseases, improving sleep, decreasing obesity and negative weight gain, lowering the risk of certain cancers, improving mobility, strengthening bone density, boosting immune function, and more! Parks provide people, who may not have access to fitness facilities, with a location to adopt a healthy lifestyle. With this in mind, the possibilities are endless with a park or green space nearby…you just have to take the first step and get outside and be active!
As we know, being physically active is important, and increasing your activity level by just a small amount each day can have a big impact on your overall health! Just as importantly, when local populations have access to park spaces they have the potential to create a strong sense of community. With a park nearby, anyone and everyone can come together to be around each other and interact with their friends and neighbors in a shared space. Through this, we can see that public parks and outdoor recreational areas have been created with the idea of helping people become happier, healthier, and more active in mind.
For more information on the Indiana DNR Parks & Development visit:
https://www.in.gov/dnr/state-parks/
For Information on the connection between parks space and health, check out the Hoosier Health and Wellness Alliance “Get Active at a park near you” flipbook.
