Green Paths to Mental Health

Green Paths to Mental Health: Understanding How Neighbourhood Income Influences the Effects of Green Space on Mental Health Nadha Hassen December 2016 Wellesley Institute works in research and policy to improve health and health equity in the GTA through action on the social determinants of health. [...] To examine the interactions between income and green space on mental health a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) [2(income) x 5 (green space)], without replication, was run on neighbourhood income, the amount of green space, and self-reported mental health data on 92 neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto. [...] To explore interactions between income and green space on mental health in Downtown Toronto the same ANOVA analysis was run, but only for neighbourhoods that are in the Downtown Toronto core, with the boundaries of “Bathurst Street to the west, the midtown rail corridor and Rosedale Valley Road to the north, the Don River to the east, and the Lake Ontario shoreline to the south” (City of Toronto, [...] These trends suggest that the direction of the relationship between the quantity of green space and self-reported mental health may depend on the neighbourhood income. [...] There was no statistically significant difference in mental health based on the amount of green space and no statistically significant interaction between the amount of green space and neighbourhood income.