22/03/2026
Since nature helps us when we are suffering with attention fatigue,
Researchers Kuo and Taylor ask,
can it help those with ADHD,
who struggle with even greater attention fatigue than the rest of us?
Research can often seem super niche,
with scientists asking only marginally different questions from each other.
I love this work because it is so clear why we need to figure this out:
ADHD is the most common neurobehavioural disorder of childhood,
affecting many adults too.
How can we better design environments and activities to help manage ADHD,
rather than make it harder?
What did the researchers do?
Very simply, Kuo and Taylor asked parents from across the US to rate 49 common after-school activities according to the effects they thought they had on their children’s ADHD symptoms.
They received 452 usable responses.
Parents were asked whether each activity made their child’s symptoms ‘much worse than usual’, ‘worse than usual’, ‘
‘the same as usual’,
‘better than usual’ or
‘much better than usual’
for the hour or so after the activity finished.
The instructions asked parents to focus specifically on four symptoms from the official ADHD diagnostic criteria that were thought to be easily observable by parents: ‘difficulty in remaining focused on unappealing tasks’,
‘difficulty in completing tasks’,
‘difficulty in listening and following directions’ and ‘difficulty in resisting distractions’.
Crucially, many of these 49 activities were the same, apart from the social and environmental contexts in which they were listed as taking place.
Reading, for example, could happen alone, in a pair or in a group, and it might take place in a green outdoor setting, a built outdoor setting or indoors.
The researchers could then see whether a child’s ADHD symptoms were exacerbated or reduced after doing the same activity in these different social and environmental settings. In other words,
can children’s ADHD symptoms improve when they are in a natural space and is this affected by the size of the group they’re in?
What did they find?
In short, yes—being outside in a green setting reduced children’s ADHD symptoms regardless of whether they did something alone,
in a pair or in a group.
In fact, being in a green area was the only environment in which ADHD symptoms improved regardless of social context.
When children took part in activities outside but in a built setting,
parents judged their symptoms to be reduced only when the activity was done alone or in a pair, but not when in a larger group.
When it came to indoor activities,
ADHD symptoms actually appeared more severe when in a group.
Remarkably, these findings held regardless of children’s gender, age (all in this study were between 5 and 18 years old),
household income (ranging from less than $25,000 to $75,000 or more per year),
region of the United States and home environment (from rural to large city).
The results were also consistent between children with hyperactivity (i.e., those diagnosed with ADHD)
and those without (i.e., those diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder),
among children with mild,
average and severe symptoms,
and among children with both ADHD and learning disorders.
There are two key takeaways here then. First, children’s ADHD symptoms are reduced by activities that take place outside in a green environment.
Second, symptoms also appear reduced when activities are done alone or in a pair, as opposed to in a larger group.
Why do we care?
This is very simple, with very clear applications.
It is also over 20 years old.
The worst setting for children with ADHD, then, is inside in large groups.
Where do we send children all day,
expecting them to ‘behave’?
Into school classrooms—inside spaces with little to no nature, with tens to hundreds to thousands of other children.
What’s the second worse setting?
Outside in a built environment in large groups—a pretty exact description of most schoolyards and playgrounds.
ADHD diagnoses among children have been increasing for the last few decades, just as children’s home and play environments are becoming progressively less green.
I know there are complex reasons and debates raging as to why diagnoses are on the rise—
I am not for one second suggesting that all of this is down to nature access.
I also know correlation doesn’t prove causation.
But regardless of the strength of the association between environment and ADHD symptoms or its mechanism,
if we know green environments are better, not just for those with ADHD but for all children, then what are we doing?
This is why I think placing this study in the context of Attention Restoration Theory is so important,
and why I like that the researchers did it. Yes, a study that shows a correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation.
But based on what we already know about environmental psychology—about the effects of natural environments on our attention, concentration and behaviour,
we should absolutely expect this kind of relationship between the severity of ADHD symptoms and green environments.
20-plus years ago, not as many people were talking about ADHD, but this research was happening. It’s continued in the intervening years, too. I think it’s important that we listen.
I worry how many children are being forced into environments that do not work for them, being made to feel as if the problem lies with them and not with what we are expecting of them.
I think we have both more liability and power in this than we realise—the environments we design for our children matter.
This means, when we realise something isn’t working, even if it is our fault as a society,
we can put it right.
How much more effort must we expend trying to medicate and discipline children so that they fit the environments we build for them, before we decide to work with children and their environment instead?
Nature has given us an environment that helps, for which we have evolved—let’s stop shutting kids out of it.
Full credit to the authors of this paper: Frances E. Kuo and Andrea Faber Taylor.
I’d like to leave you with a couple of quotes from the paper itself:
‘This line of research has exciting implications for the management of ADHD. If clinical trials and additional research confirm the value of exposure to nature for ameliorating ADHD, daily doses of “green time” might supplement medications and behavioral approaches to ADHD.
These “doses” might take a variety of forms: choosing a greener route for the walk to school, doing class work or homework at a window with a relatively green view, or playing in a green yard or sports field at break and after school.
While medications are effective for most children with ADHD, they are ineffective for some, and other children cannot tolerate them.
In the case of children for whom medication is tolerable and effective, exposure to green settings as part of their daily routine might augment the medication’s effects, offering more complete relief of symptoms and helping children function more effectively both at school and at home. …among those children for whom medication is not an option,
a regular regime of green views and green time outdoors might offer the only relief from symptoms available.’
‘The findings outlined here, taken in the context of previous research,
suggest that common after-school and weekend activities conducted in relatively natural outdoor environments may be widely effective in reducing ADHD symptoms.
If controlled experiments and clinical trials bear out this potential, such natural treatments promise to supplement current approaches to managing ADHD,
with the advantages of being widely accessible,
inexpensive,
nonstigmatizing,
and free of side effects.’
Seems they are assessing what we’ve seen in our little woodland space for a long time 💚🍃🌳RDaSH NHS Mental Health Movement@greenspace Jackdaw Wood
