Science Proves Seeing The Ocean is Good for Your Mental Health

There’s just something soothing about the ocean. No matter how busy you get at work, once you go to the beach, hear the waves and feel the sea breeze, you’ll feel peace from within.

It turns out that there exists a link between ocean or sea view and mental health, according to a new scientific study. The study, published in the journal Health & Place, was conducted by scientists at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, together with researchers from Michigan State University. It found that having an increased view of nature helps in lowering psychological distress.

To get to their findings, researchers looked into 450 individuals from Wellington city. These people were given different blue and green spaces from different residential locations within the city. For the blue space, the subjects were given the view of the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. For the green space, they had green parks and grassy, sports field as their view.

Comparing the two groups while taking into consideration their gender, age, and wealth. Researchers found that blue space is more strongly associated with lower psychological distress. In contrast, similar results were not observed among individuals in the green space group, this could be because the blue space was all from nature – like the ocean, while the green space can also be manmade such as the grassy fields.

One of the authors of the study, Amber L. Pearson, said that if the green space would’ve been all natural, different results may be observed. With that said, researchers suggest that more studies should be done to confirm if blue space can help with mental health if the location is in cities.

However the study turns out, we can’t really deny that the ocean is gorgeous and if you want to take a break from the bustling city life and de-stress, get a dose of “ vitamin Sea.”