I recently read an article reviewing the data on the link between noise stress and mental health. Merve Eşmebaşı had touched on it during her presentation on biophilic design, so I knew that there was an adverse link. But I had no idea how bad it was.
To quote the paper:
exposure to noise, particularly from sources such as traffic, can potentially impact the central nervous system. These harms of noise increase the susceptibility to mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, suicide, and behavioral problems in children and adolescents.
That’s quite a lot of adverse impacts! But why is that the case?
Noise stress impacts
The main impacts of noise on mental health is stress, or “noise stress”. This occurs when noise intrudes in a way that disturbs us in some way. For example, the following can be a result of noise stress:
- sleep disturbance
- annoyance
- learned helplessness
The first two should be familiar to all, but learned helplessness might need a little further explanation. It is a term coined by Martin Seligman to describe the phenomenon where people faced with uncontrollable events:
produce passivity in the face of trauma, inability to learn that responding is effective, and emotional stress in animals, and possibly depression in man.
Here is a diagram from the article to demonstrate the problems noise causes within the brain itself.
A significant problem
According to the research, there is growing evidence of the link between road traffic noise, aircraft noise, and railway noise to stress response in humans. This means that people consistently exposed to these noise sources in the home or at work have a higher risk of noise stress, and the mental consequences.
The WHO has reported that such stress can so adversely impact mental health as to take years off the lives of those exposed.
Good news
But it’s not all bad news. Thankfully, there are various ways to limit the impacts of noise on mental health. Examples provided in the article include exercise, meditation, green space availability, co-exposures, and mental health training.
As mentioned at the start of this piece, the judicious use of biophilic design can offset the impact. Similarly, urban greening can also assist, and will be covered in a future blog.
Sound masking can reduce the negative effects of noise. This is because it reduces or even eliminates the negative impact of intrusive noise.
The full paper is available here.