Research Final Draft-Nature Knows Best: Green Space Can Help ADHD Symptoms

Most people enjoy walking through a park on a sunny day or hiking a woodland trail through the forest and taking in the sights, smells and sounds of nature.  However, for children suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) studies are showing that simply playing in the park or hiking in the woods could possibly help lessen or relieve their ADHD symptoms.  Most children diagnosed with this disorder start their day with a dose of Ritalin or similar stimulant drug.  Although the use of stimulant drugs have proven beneficial for severe cases of ADHD, studies are revealing that a lack of time spent in natural green spaces, especially for those living in large metropolitan areas, could contribute to childhood ADHD, because these children have little to no contact with nature, no easy access to simple free play within green, natural settings, and are more restricted from the benefits of regular physical exercise.

The diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorders has increased at an alarming rate, followed by the prescription of psychostimulants.  The developmental effects on a child’s growing brain has yet to be adequately studied, something which the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry led by Jaak Panksepp, PhD is trying to remedy.  Dr. Panksepp is convinced that one reason for the increasing incidences of ADHD may be the diminishing availability of opportunities for preschool children to engage in natural self-generated social play.  Panksepp’s 2007 pre-clinical work indicated that play can facilitate behavioral inhibition in growing animals, while psychostimulants reduce playfulness.  Whether intensive play can actually alleviate ADHD symptoms requires further evaluation. However, if play time has the slightest chance of replacing play-reducing psychostimulants and developing healthy pro-social minds, it is certainly deserving of further study.

Other similar research positively links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature.  In his book, Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv (2008) reveals how thoughtful exposure of children to nature can be a powerful form of therapy for those with ADHD and other disorders.  As these studies suggest, it could be assumed that, just as we need good nutrition and adequate sleep, we may also need contact with nature to maintain good health.

Researchers have found that children with ADHD experience a greater reduction of symptoms when they play in a park full of grass and trees than on a concrete playground. The University of Illinois Landscape and Human Health Lab’s 2004 research of ADHD has shown that performing activities in green settings can reduce children’s ADHD symptoms.  In an initial Midwestern-based survey, the Lab found that parents of children with ADHD were more likely to nominate activities that typically occur in green outdoor settings as being best for their child’s symptoms and activities that typically occur in indoor or non-green outdoor settings as worst for symptoms. In a subsequent nationwide survey, parents again rated leisure activities—such as reading or playing sports—as improving children’s symptoms more when performed in green outdoor settings than in non-green settings.

Green space is very hard to come by, however, for many children living in dense urban areas. Even as early as 1970, the U.S. Census Bureau found that more people live in urbanized areas than in rural.  In the book, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America, author Alan Berger (2006) brings to light how the phenomenon of horizontal urbanization is forming faster than scholarly theories can be published to explain them.  The movement from densely populated city centers to newly urbanized ground is rapidly growing. It is estimated that more than 62 percent of the American population lives in newly urbanized areas (Berger, 18).  So much land has been swallowed up by miles and miles of houses, strip malls, office buildings, and golf courses. This type of land waste is so quietly instrusive we hardly notice. What is sacrificed to the newly urbanized area is the green space that once existed there.

Berger suggests that decisions made over the next few years in our country will have a significant impact on pollution, infrastructure, congestion, and quality of life. Resource preservation and the availability of water may ultimately define the limits of growth in many parts of the nation. If cities do not make placeholders for green space or land banks within it interiors, it only encourages expansion at the perimeter.

Not all is lost however, as many cities are making strides in incorporating more green spaces into city centers.  One of the best examples of this effort is the city of Chicago.  Under Mayor Richard Daly, the city began reclaiming its 165-year-old motto, “City in a Garden.”  Chicago launched a campaign to not only preserve open space, but to re-create wildlife habitats, greenways, and other natural lands with the goal of making Chicago the greenest city in the nation (Louv, 258).  This kind of effort by one city gives rise to the hope that many other cities will follow suit.

Children who are at risk in heavily urban areas can also learn about active living and healthy eating by being taught how to plant fruits, vegetables, and flowers.  An educational program detailed by author D.M.P. McLennan (2009) entitled Ready, Set, Grow! implemented in Ontario, Canada, in a classroom which was located in the downtown area of this large urban public school system.  These children were considered at risk because of the services they received to compensate for what was lacking in their home lives, such as a breakfast program and homework club to help keep them in a safe environment after school.  Through this program, these children were able to experience nature with all of their senses: by seeing the rainbow of colors in the variety of fruits and vegetables, tasting how wonderful healthy produce can be, by smelling the richness of the earth, listening to songs, poems, and stories about eating and living healthy, and feeling the dampness of the earth with their fingers as they helped to make life grow.  These children also carried this knowledge home and shared it with their families. The success of this program provides evidence that by encouraging our children to become engaged in gardening and the earth at a young age, they can develop a life-long appreciation of the outdoors.

These types of programs are arguably as important as the standards-based instruction and assessment that are being stressed so strongly in today’s schools.  McLennan emphasizes that while there is a time and place for literacy and numeracy in student achievements, at the same time the aesthetic, play-based, and exploratory opportunities for children must also be considered to create healthy, well rounded individuals.

A natural benefit of play is exercise. Exercise can help release pent up energy and ADHD sufferers in particular need opportunities to release their energy. This is especially evident in the hyperactive or sensory seeking child. It, in turn, enables the child to settle down and approach work with greater ease.  Exercise is also a regulator. Deep pressure exercises like hugging or wrestling and heavy work like carrying books are both calming and organizing.  Exercise also improves concentration, decreases depression and anxiety and promotes brain growth (Jaffe, 2007).  Individual sports or team sports such as basketball and hockey, which require constant motion, are good options for ADHD children.  Martial arts training, tae kwon do, and yoga can help enhance mental control as they work out the body.

Raye-Anne Cook, in her article Exercise and the ADHD Child (2008) states that intense exercise increases the blood flow and also increases levels of endorphins and acetylcholine in the brain, both of which appear to alleviate the symptoms of ADHD.   The symptoms of ADHD can be different for each child and these, along with the child’s individual personality traits, need to be taken into consideration when choosing an exercise to suit the child.  Conversely, watching TV and playing computer games do not regulate a child the way movement and heavy work does.  The first study to link television-watching to ADHD was published in April 2004 (Louv, 31-33).  The Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle maintains that each hour of television watched per day by preschoolers increases by ten percent the likelihood that they will develop concentration problems and other symptoms of attention-deficit disorders by age seven.

This disturbing information about television is only part of the larger environmental and cultural changes taking place in our lifetime, which is the rapid move from a rural to a highly urbanized culture.  In an agricultural society, during times of exploration and settlement or hunting and gathering which has taken place over most of mankind’s history, energetic boys are prized for their strength, speed, and agility.  Even as late as the 1950s, most families still had some sort of agricultural connection (Louv, 15).  Many of these children would have been active doing physically constructive activities, such as farm chores or leisure play like splashing in the swimming hole, climbing trees, or racing to the sandlot for a game of baseball.  All of this unregimented play would have been steeped in nature.

Since we cannot simply or easily return populated, developed land with natural, forested land, especially one that is a safe area for our children in which to play, there is an alternative.  Playgrounds designed to simulate a natural woodland, called Playscapes, can offer a creative solution to a natural play environment for children.  Author Rusty Keeler (2008), in his book, Natural Playscapes: Creating Outdoor Play Environments for the Soul, provides an outline and suggestions for communities and groups wishing to design playscapes in their neighborhood.  Many varied materials can be used in the design of a playscape, virtually whatever is available naturally in the local region.  For example, coastal communities could use large chunks of driftwood for balancing and seating areas.  Rather than using concrete or asphalt, the ground surfaces in a playscape are varied creating walkways from stones, bricks, and woodchips.  Not only do varied surfaces provide visual variations in the playscape, they also suggest different ways for children to move their bodies, encouraging them to move at different speeds with different actions, using different muscles.

Keeler offers compelling study-based benefits for installing playscapes rather than traditional playgrounds.  The greater amount of nature exposure, the greater the benefits: Children with nature nearby their homes are more resistant to stress; have lower incidence of behavioral disorders, anxiety and depression, and have a higher measure of self worth. Children with views of and contact with nature score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline.  Children who play regularly in natural environments show more advanced motor fitness, including coordination, balance and agility, and they are sick less often. Play in outdoor environments stimulates all aspects of child development more readily than indoor environments (Keeler, 294).

It has been theorized that an increase in the diagnosis of ADHD may be that children no longer have enough opportunities to play.  This can lead to the assumption that the expectations of our educational system and the intolerance of play in children may be leading to an increase in the diagnosis of ADHD (Panksepp, 2007).  Most parents and educational systems do not recognize the profound value of natural play, which is the kind of play within nature that encourages joyful and emotionally-fulfilling education.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (2008), current medical opinion acknowledges that ADHD is a very real condition with long-term adverse effects on academic performance, vocational success, and social-emotional development. It should not be suggested that Ritalin and stimulant drugs should never be used to treat a child with severe ADHD symptoms.  However, the evidence supports that time spent in nature can improve attention and other psychological aspects of health.  Nature can help children develop powers of observation and creativity, as well as a sense of peace and being at one with the world.  Recess, sports, physical fitness, or simply playing in the outdoors and nature can have a significantly positive impact on children’s health and well being.  Parents, caregivers, and educators must all be encouraged to get our children active and out into the natural environment.

References:

Berger, Alan. (2006). Drosscape: wasting land in urban America. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

Burgess, Kelly. (2008). The great ritalin debate: treating adhd with medication. iparenting.com. http://www.childrentoday.com/articles/addadhd/the-great-ritalin-debate-719.

Cook, Raye-Anne. (2008). Exercise and the adhd child. Remedial and special education: educating parents, therapists, doctors, teachers, facilitators and caregivers. http://www.remspeced.co.za/ articles/20060308_0001.htm.

Edmunds, L. (2010). Let’s move.  Parks and Recreation, 45(9), 15-16. Retrieved October 22, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Faber-Taylor, A., Kuo, F., & Sullivan, W.C. (2001). Coping with add: the surprising connection to green play settings. Environment and Behavior, 33(1), 54-77.

Hayward, P. (2010). Quality and quantity. Parks and Recreation, 45(9), 10-10. Retrieved October 21, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Ingram, M. (2007). Biology and beyond: the science of “back to nature” farming in the united states. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(2), 298-312.  Retrieved October 21, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Jaffe-Gill, Ellen, et al. (2007). Parenting a child with ADD/ADHD Help Guide. http://www.helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_parenting_strategies.htm.

Keeler, R. (2008). Natural playscapes: creating outdoor play environments for the soul. Redmond, WA: Exchange Press.

Karlson, I., & Simonsson, M. (2008). Preschool work teams’ view of ways of working with gender-parents’ involvement. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36, 171-177. Retrieved October 21, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Louv, R. (2008). Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York, NY: Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

McLennan, D.M.P. (2009). “Ready, set, grow!” nurturing young children through gardening. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37, 329-333. Retrieved October 21, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Panksepp, J. (2007). Can play diminish adhd and facilitate the construction of the social brain?. Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 16(2), 57-66.  Retrieved October 21, 2010 from EBSCOhost database.

Schottelkorb M.D., A., & Ray M.D., D. (2009). Adhd symptom reduction in elementary students: a single-case effectiveness design. Professional School Counselors, 13(1), 11-22.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Mental Health. (2008). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) (08-3572). Bethesda, MD: Government Printing Office.

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