Increasing green space coverage in an area by 1 percent is associated with a 0.2 percent drop in the suicide rate, a study by a team at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan said.
The study on the possible correlation, led by the university’s Department of Geomatics professor Wu Chih-da (吳治達), was recently published in the academic journal Landscape and Urban Planning, the university said in a press release yesterday.
The team used figures from the National Health Insurance database on the number of suicides in Taiwan’s 368 townships from 2000 to 2018 and then used geographical and satellite data to measure the amount of green space — mainly parks and school campuses — in each of the townships.
Photo: CNA
Using the spatial pattern analysis software Fragstats, the team quantified the data based on several indices for green space, including land area, shape and proximity to people.
The researchers also had to normalize the data by taking into account other factors known to affect the suicide rate, such as age, sex, economic circumstances, education and level of urbanization, Wu said.
For example, historical data show that rural areas in Taiwan have a higher suicide rate than urban areas, despite typically having more access to green space, he said.
However, that phenomenon is driven by other factors affecting the suicide rate, and therefore had to be adjusted for the effects of green space to be accurately analyzed, he said.
The study concluded that long-term exposure to green space — particularly green space that is greater in size, simpler in shape and closer in proximity to people — is associated with a decreased suicide risk.
In quantifiable terms, it found that increasing green space coverage by 1 percent in an area is associated with a 0.2 percent drop in the suicide rate.
In other words, in an area that had 1,000 suicides over a 10-year period, increasing green space coverage by 1 percent could reduce the number of suicides to 998.
Wu said he hoped the study would be useful to urban planners in government, particularly those in cities, which have to contend with high property values and a general lack of open space.
In such circumstances, even small projects, such as stitching together several small plots of land to create a green corridor, can have beneficial effects on residents’ psychological health, he said.
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