Chronic deficiency of diversity and pluralism in research on nature's mental health effects: a planetary health problem

Abstract

We explore two as-yet-unconnected trends: evidence of nature's effects on mental health/wellbeing, and acknowledgment that behavioral research is overwhelmingly informed by globally non-representative societies. We assess geographies, ethnicities, and conceptualizations in 174 peer-reviewed studies of nature's mental-health/wellbeing connection. Findings reveal a Western-World bias: over-representation of White participants; ethnicity overlooked (62% of studies do not report participants' ethnicity); narrow views of mental health/wellbeing; and nature operationalized largely as greenspace and forests. Because planetary health is largely contingent on the Ethnosphere (the planet's rich cultural web), we encourage future studies to test nature's mental health/wellbeing effects pluralistically and beyond unrepresentative subsets of humankind.