Nature variables and mental health in the adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD®) study

Contact with natural environments (e.g., forests, parks, and neighborhood greenery) may support adolescent mental health. However, these observed benefits vary as a function of how “nature” is measured. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides a testbed to examine nature-health associations in a large, demographically diverse national sample (>11,000 adolescents). We operationalized the Preferred Reporting Items in Greenspace Health Research (PRIGSHARE) to systematically evaluate five measures of nature at baseline (age 9–10) in the ABCD Release-5.1, testing associations with mental health and park cover, tree canopy cover, natural land cover, “greenness,” and open water. Based on our evaluation of nature measures using PRIGSHARE, only two of five measures (percent tree canopy cover and percent park cover at the census tract level) were identified as appropriate for analysis. Mental health was assessed via parent-report on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Nature data were available for 10,230 participants (47.8% female). After adjustment for diverse covariates, adolescents living in census-tracts with greater tree canopy cover demonstrated modestly lower internalizing symptoms (β=-0.026, 95%CI: (-0.046, -0.005), p