Hi everyone!
I hope you have enjoyed your recess week thus far. Let me share with you another quote to kickstart the second half of Sem 1.
“Be patient with yourself. You are growing stronger every day. The weight of the world will become lighter…and you will begin to shine brighter. Don’t give up.” – Robert Tew
These days, do you ever find yourself having a loss of interest in things that you do? Or are you not feeling well more frequently than the previous days? If you have these signs, it might be from a mental disorder I am about to share (Williams, 2019)[1].
Currently, in Singapore, we are living in a world where we isolate ourselves at homes and social connections are limited. The time we spent would usually be on social media, gaming or connecting with someone else using video call platforms. When we are not connecting with the outside world, we are earning a deficit from connecting with the natural environment. This is known as the Nature Deficit Disorder (or NDD).
Coined by Richard Louv in his best-selling book “Last Child in the Woods”[2], NDD has become a growing concern amongst younger generations. Particularly, in Singapore, I want to investigate whether Singaporeans need green spaces as a coping solution to their mental crisis.
In the survey, 39 responses were collected, and they are youths aged between 15 to 25 years old. There are two conclusions which I derived from based on the results.
Firstly, most of them agree that green spaces help them by alleviating their stress levels. Secondly, green spaces, however, were not the sole solution to their mental health, which there are other means such as gaming and connecting with friends outside of green spaces. Even though parks and gardens are available, the need for technology to connect is more prevalent.
The majority (33 of them) felt that green spaces have benefited them mostly during this pandemic (Source:©Lee Wee Meng)
Source:©Lee Wee Meng
Spending time with friends outside of green spaces, as well as gaming, are some main ways that they can cope well with their mental health (Source:©Lee Wee Meng)
Ultimately, the youths do not feel the need to always connect with Nature whenever stress arises. They would rather need technology to connect with other people, which is more convenient than accessing green spaces. One person mentioned in the comments section of my survey is that green spaces “merely becomes just another space to study or chill” and are “pointless if they do not impart call for action in youth towards green habits and the environment”. I would find this to be true if people regarding these spaces as artificially made and not natural space.
Some of the useful comments they shared in the survey (Source:©Lee Wee Meng)
In the next mind,
Wee Meng
Hi Wee Meng,
What an interesting read and insight into the mind of youths! Yes, I do agree that in this day and age, youths especially are becoming more and more reliant on technology.
I do disagree, however, that green spaces are pointless if they do not impart a call to action for youth to cultivate green habits. While green spaces are artificially made in Singapore, they still provide many other benefits to people of all ages such as by alleviating stress (as you mentioned), promoting healthy lifestyles, decreasing pollution etc.
Let me know what you think or if I misinterpreted anything!
Hi Stacia!
Thanks for dropping by my blog post!
It’s agreeable that these days, especially in the COVID-19 situation, many people would want to connect with their loved ones while being at home. That is why there is a huge reliance on technology to make such communications possible. Also, in this way, it isn’t necessary to walk down to the green space to wind down unless they are unable to get in touch with others.
While I do agree with you also that green spaces are necessary by reducing mental health issues and promoting better ways of living healthily, I disagree with how the land in Singapore is being used. While it is inevitable that the most of the land is being used for housing and other purposes, the main problem here is that we shouldn’t be making use of the natural spaces in Singapore to be exploited for other sectors. We shouldn’t be touching those areas where wild greenery (that’s not being disturbed or intervened by humans) is still present This problem will be scoped down for my next blog post where I will be sharing more about the green spaces in Singapore.
Cheers,
Wee Meng
Hi Wee Meng,
Great job on the primary research ! I have some reactions and feedback, which I invite you to post publicly so everyone can learn. None of this is an indication that I don’t think your post is good. I think it’s great.
THE QUESTIONS
If you ask ppl “do you think green spaces have improved your mental health during the pandemic”…
1) are you really just interested in the pandemic ?
2) can you see how your Q might be leading and how you might ask it differently so that it’s not ?
If you ask ppl how they think green spaces have benefited them, and then give them a set of options (MCQ), do you see that you might fail to capture benefits that you haven’t thought of ? This is a great opportunity to think about why we do pilot studies (not that I’m saying you should have done that), and especially use techniques such as focus group discussions to help us craft questionnaires that are socially relevant. An alternative approach is to ask an open-ended Q and then categorise responses.
RESPONDENTS
1) It’s great that you gave the age range – were they mostly NUS students ?
2) If you really had respondents who were minors, be aware that if this were a genuine study, you wouldn’t be able to involve them without obtaining parental consent, unless an ethics board approved a consent waiver.
A REACTION
I was quite disheartened by how many ppl who said that green spaces don’t improve their wellbeing.
A SUGGESTION
It’s always nice to place your results in context. Meaning – how do your findings stack up against prior research. To that end, here are two local studies you might find interesting.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133781 – Note – the first author is a BES alumnus – this was her honours project.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10745-014-9709-x
jc
ps, the anti-spam script I had to type here was totally bizarre
Hi Dr Coleman,
I’m glad to have your valuable feedback. Allow me to answer some of your questions.
Q1) In this topic, I’d like to know if they have used green spaces as a means to heal their mental well-being during this pandemic as a correlation.
Q2) Yes. It would actually be relevant if I could ask a question in general to get an overall sense of the proportion of people accessing green spaces to destress, even before the pandemic.
Overall, I agree with your feedback that open-ended questions do give a more stark contrast in the opinions of their choices so that the issues pertaining to green spaces are able to surface out. And certainly, it can’t be done on a large scale for a blog assignment!
Respondents:
Q1) Not all of the respondents come from NUS, some of the respondents come from another university or a different institution (e.g. Singapore Polytechnic)
Q2) I would agree on that note. But over here, there were no minors involved in the survey.
To be honest, not everyone would agree that green spaces help them to destress. As mentioned, there could be of many other methods to relieve stress like gaming and contacting with friends on social media.
Lastly, I’m appreciative of your suggestion. I will take a look over the links you have shared.
Cheers,
Wee Meng