How Nature Can Alleviate Pain—and Why Climate Change Could Get in the Way

When Roger Ulrich was a teenager, he suffered several bouts of kidney disease. He was forced to spend long periods of time bedridden, either in an antiseptic hospital building or staring out of his bedroom window to recover. But his view at home included a large pine tree, one that helped his emotional state during these painful moments. 

Decades later, Ulrich decided to dedicate his career to improving the design of healthcare facilities for healing, and wondered if other patients experienced the same solace from nature that he did as a child. He put his theory to the test by studying the records of gallbladder surgery patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital—and made a groundbreaking discovery. 

He found that people assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had faster recovery times and took fewer painkillers than those in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall. Ulrich’s seminal 1984 research opened the door for a whole field of study on nature’s ability to alleviate pain and provide a slew of other health benefits for people. 

Now, a growing number of doctors around the world are “prescribing nature” to their patients, and several newly published studies add even more evidence to the powerful healing effects of green or blue spaces. But as climate change accelerates and human activities encroach on ecosystems, people are losing access to nature or watching the green spaces they love change dramatically, which could affect the health benefits people derive from them, experts say.

The Nature Treatment: A wide body of research links exposure to nature with a variety of gains, such as decreasing stress, improving sleep, lowering blood pressure and increasing focus. Even just having a potted plant in your home can improve mental health, said Peter James, an adjunct associate professor of environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“​​You’re typing at your computer and you hit a little block and you stare out the window at the trees swaying in the wind or something for a little bit, and then you can kind of get ready for your next cognitive task,” James told me, as one example of the effect. 

Nature experiences can be particularly helpful for people with psychological disorders. A pilot study published last week found that interacting with wildlife could help improve symptoms in veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. A total of 19 veterans participated in the research program, which involved forest walks, assisting with wildlife care in a rehabilitation center, observation of wildlife in a sanctuary and bird watching. The researchers found that there was a significant reduction in anxiety after each activity. 

“A lot of them talked about getting benefit because they felt like they were helping to soothe the animals, or helping to care for the animals,” study author Donna Perry, a nursing professor at UMass Chan Medical School, told me. Some participants even asked if they could do the study again—they couldn’t because the program had ended, but they did each receive a bird feeder to continue on their own. 

“From a big-picture sense, through really all the activities, especially with the education, participants gained a lot more insight into the relationship between humans and the larger environment,” Perry said. 

Scientists are still determining the “why” behind nature’s impact on human health. In some cases, the answer is fairly simple. For example, trees can reduce heat stress by providing shade, or nature trails give enough space for people to exercise. But other benefits like pain alleviation are far more complex. Pain can be subjective or influenced by a number of factors, from a person’s stress levels to experiences they’ve had in the past. 

Since a lot of people have positive associations with nature, “they might think that being exposed to nature should help them,” Maximilian O. Steininger, a doctoral candidate studying environmental psychology at the University of Vienna, told me. “So this would be a classic placebo effect.” 

However, a study led by Steininger, published on Thursday, found that exposure to nature scenes actually changes responses in the brain that are specifically related to pain. 

During the study, the researchers administered electrical shocks to almost 50 participants while they were in an MRI machine. While the patients were getting the jolts, they were either shown videos of a natural scene, urban environment or an indoor office. As you can probably guess by this point, the patients watching the nature scene reported lower pain and showed reduced pain-related brain responses than when they were watching the other videos. That means that even digital exposure to nature can have impacts on health, according to the study. 

“It has a very high practical implication,” Steininger said. “There are a lot of people suffering from chronic pain conditions or acute pain conditions, and there is this huge opioid crisis going on, especially in the U.S. So it’s actually quite interesting to see how different non-pharmacological approaches might help to deal with those issues.”

The Same But Different: Many people hold special connections to specific parts of nature where they feel most at home, from the small forest behind their house to the national parks they visit each year with their families. But what happens when you witness that ecosystem change before your eyes? It turns out this feeling of homesickness while you are still at home has a name: solastalgia. 

The term—coined in 2007—is defined more specifically as “the pain or distress caused by the loss of, or inability to derive solace connected to the negatively perceived state of one’s home environment.” It’s becoming more prevalent as climate change accelerates and weather disasters or warming cause shifts in nature, psychologists and therapists say. 

In some cases, seeing those changes can fuel climate anxiety, while witnessing pollution or development can trigger feelings of loss, Queen Essang wrote in a recent opinion article for Scientific American. She discusses the impact of construction and agriculture on nature around her home in Nigeria. After the climate-fueled megafires hit Australia in 2019 and 2020, many residents experienced severe solastalgia as their communities were left charred and void of wildlife, according to a 2024 study. 

Other times, people simply lack access to expansive green spaces. A 2020 report by the Center for American Progress found that communities of color are three times more likely than predominantly white neighborhoods to be located in areas with limited access to nature. Meanwhile, experts say that national parks—some of the most pristine natural spaces in the U.S.—are likely to face degradation amid budget and staffing cuts enacted by the Trump administration, Politico reports. 

However, Harvard’s James is encouraged by the fact that people are protesting in support of national parks to secure their access to nature—and the benefits it brings. 

“It’s refreshing that people … are looking at this as a major issue,” he said. “There’s so many people being cut at so many other government agencies, but the fact that people care enough to really focus on the National Park Service demonstrates how valuable and how much of a priority I think our national parks are to us as Americans.” 

More Top Climate News 

Federal judges in California and Maryland ordered this week that the Trump administration temporarily reinstate tens of thousands of federal employees fired from many agencies in recent weeks, Joey Garrison and Dinah Voyles Pulver report for USA Today. This includes terminated probationary employees from the departments of Interior (which oversees the National Park Service), Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Defense and Treasury. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that the Office of Personnel Management lacked the authority to order the terminations in the first place and falsely claimed that poor performance was the reason for many of the layoffs. 

Meanwhile, the Interior Department is suspending 20 Biden-era legal opinions, including one that holds energy companies accountable for the impact of oil spills and other manufacturing activities on birds, Catrin Einhorn and Lisa Friedman report for The New York Times. That particular legal opinion relates to the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and requires companies to pay fines when birds die from a fossil fuel company’s actions. Tara Zuardo, senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Times that the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law would have helped BP avoid around $100 million in fines following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which devastated avian populations for years. 

Prices have continued to go up on grocery goods such as eggs, chocolate and beef as tariffs take effect against some of the U.S.’s neighboring countries, Ayurella Horn-Muller reports for Grist. There are outside factors contributing to high food costs, many of them climate-fueled such as drought and the spread of bird flu. With the tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, “we will see the compounding impacts of tariffs and climate change-related shocks on the supply chain,” Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at The Ohio State University, told Grist. 

And finally, some good news to start your weekend: Scientists spotted the first endangered North Atlantic right whale calf in Massachusetts waters in 2025. Each year, Cape Cod Bay hosts one of the largest feeding aggregations of right whales during early spring, and scientists are encouraged when they see even one new calf since there are just around 370 individuals left in the wild. “Given the critically endangered status of North Atlantic right whales, every birth is vital for population recovery,” Daniel Palacios, director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the nonprofit Center for Coastal Studies, said in a statement. “The long-term survival of the species depends on these calves, highlighting the urgent need to protect Cape Cod Bay as a critical habitat where they feed and nurse.”