Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter contains related literature and studies that have a connection to the

previous studies of the researchers and find a relation to are studies of knowing the

reason how indoor plants affect the mental health of each individual.

Indoor Plants

The benefits of indoor gardening extend to mental and physical wellness. For those

suffering from depression and anxiety, psychologists advise green gardening treatment

since plants have a healing influence on humans. Any encounter with nature may have a

calming effect on people's mental health, lowering psychological tension by suppressing

nervous system activity (Durbanova, 2021). In a study, people felt comfortable, soothed,

and natural after the transplanting task while people who engaged in computer tasks felt

uncomfortable, awakened, and artificial. Indoor plants have positive physiological effects

on the autonomic nervous system by suppressing sympathetic activity, which often

increases when a subject is exposed to a stressor. The study suggests that active

interaction with indoor plants can reduce physiological and psychological stress

compared with mental work (Lee et al., 2015). In a real estate company in Shanghai, they

conducted an experiment where they placed indoor green plants in one working space

but did not in another to determine if there is a significant difference in employees'

perceived stress after working in the environment with or without plants. As a result, it

was shown that people who worked with indoor green plants had a significantly lower
level of stress than those who worked without plants, confirming that there was a

significant difference in a working space with and without plants and indoor plants help to

reduce employees' stress. (Liu et al., 2022).

A study was conducted in a classroom setting to investigate the effect of indoor

plants on the happiness of female high school students. According to the findings, there

was no significant difference in the mean happiness score between the intervention and

control groups before the intervention. However, after the intervention, the mean

happiness score increased. In the posttest, the happiness score in the intervention group

was significantly higher than in the control group. The results demonstrated that indoor

plants in the classroom may be beneficial in increasing the happiness of female high

school students (Najafi & Keshmiri, 2018). The view of nature and the indoor plants,

according to the participants, are pleasing to look at, inspire feelings of relaxation, and

elicit happy emotions, all of which help create opportunities for meditation and

contemplation. They communicated a sense of being rooted in nature and the spirituality

and sense of wholeness that the natural elements evoke. Additionally, they claimed that

the presence of natural components enhanced a feeling of security (Raanaas et al.,

2016). There is increasing evidence that suggests that plants can contribute to creating

a higher quality environment. A satisfaction survey and physiological measurements were

used to assess the effects of plant characteristics such as color, odor, and the size on

human comfort in this study's series of experiments. The findings showed that interior

offices with plants were preferred over those without. The most favored conditions were

said to be those with small, green plants that have a slight scent (Qin et al., 2014).

Mental Health
 The COVID-19 pandemic led countries to implement interventions such as

quarantine, distancing, and isolation to prevent the spreading of the virus. However, these

interventions are likely to have led to many unintended consequences. There is evidence

suggesting that isolation and quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic harm one's

mental health. Based on 5218 responses from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany,

France, the United States, Portugal, Italy, New Zealand, and Mexico, 3043 responded

that nature helps them to cope with the lockdown. The study discovered that the severity

of the lockdown had a significant impact on mental health and that contact with nature

helps people cope with these effects, particularly for those under strict lockdown (Pouso

et al., 2021). The data from Google Trends between March 16, 2020 and March 23, 2020

showed that there were major changes in mental health symptom searches associated

with stay-at-home orders. The findings are based on more than 10 million mental health

Google searches within the United States. In line with the analyses, “afraid,” “anxiety,”

“apathy,” “avoiding,” “hopeless,” “insomnia,” “irritable,” “procrastinate,” “restless,”

“suicide,” “suicidality,” and “worthless” all have seen significant increases in search

queries several days before the official implementation of the stay-at-home policies. The

results are based on more than 10 million mental health Google searches within the

United States. The terms associated with the most significant changes in these trends

were "afraid," "suicide," "anxiety," and "suicidal". Stay at home orders appear to have a

greater impact on mental health than COVID-19 related physical health (Jacobson et al.,

2020). According to studies, cities generally have a higher risk of serious mental disease

than rural places. Growing up and residing in cities has been linked by epidemiological

research to a significantly increased risk for schizophrenia. Living in poverty can cause
and result from impairments linked to poor mental health, but correlation does not imply

causality. Social isolation, social exclusion, environment, prejudice, discrimination as well

as living in poverty contribute to the mental health burden of a person (Gruebner et al.,

2017).

Green places, such as backyard and balcony gardens, have a favorable impact on

mental health, and home gardening has a similar effect. Green space such as a home

garden will therefore serve as "ecological medicine" for mental health both during and

after the COVID-19 epidemic (Zhang et al., 2021). The natural environments within urban

areas are associated with the benefits of human health and well-being. The respondents

who engaged in the gardening activity and used a garden as their coping mechanism to

relax reported better health and well-being than those who did not (de Bell et al., 2020).

Spending time in natural environments such as parks, woodlands, and beaches can

improve health and well-being of a person. Individuals who spent 120 minutes or more in

nature had consistently higher levels of both health and well-being than those people who

are not exposed to nature. It suggests exposing yourself to at least 120 minutes a week

in nature for good health and well-being (White et al., 2019). Based on increasing

evidence and studies, arts participation can give positive effects and improve mental

health. The positive effects reported are lower levels of depression, increased self-

confidence, reduction of anxiety, reduced stress, reduced agitation, positive distraction,

less negative feelings, and increased social interaction. Also, arts activities have been

documented as holistic, non-medical, low-cost interventions with the potential of

promoting public mental health (Jensen & Bonde, 2018).

Group 4

• Pareñas
• Cubero
• Cainoy
• Roque