Environmental and Social Determinants of Child Mental Health

Threats to lifelong mental health can arise for young children from sources including poverty, abuse or neglect, racism, inequity, and pollution. On May 11, 15 neuroscientists, physicians, psychologists, public health researchers, and advocates came together to discuss new research and solutions to children’s mental health challenges during a daylong “Environmental and Social Determinants of Child Mental Health,” symposium hosted by MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and The JPB Foundation. Experts relayed the hopeful message that there are many emerging ways to reduce and reverse the harms to young children that could otherwise last a lifetime.

Gregory Bratman—a Nature and Health researcher and Steering Committee member—was invited to speak at this symposium. Bratman noted that just as social or personal stresses can make people more susceptible to environmental ones, remedies such as increasing the presence of nature in urban environments might simultaneously improve both problems (for instance, increased urban green spaces can reduce air pollution and improve psychological well-being). Bratman also described some of his research as director of UW’s Environment and Wellbeing Lab to experimentally test and validating such ideas—walks in the park reduced anxiety and rumination and elevated cognition.