Support Mental Restoration/Ease Stress

Jiang, He, Chen, Larsen, and Wang evaluated how driving on a freeway through various sorts of urban environments influences driver experience.  They found via 90-minute simulations of environments through which study participants “drove” at the legal speed limit (70–120 km/hour) that: “The summarized mental status measure is the average value of the seven measures of negative mental status (boredom, anger, frustration, tension, anxiety, avoidance, mental fatigue). . . . the tree-regularcondition evoked significantly lower levels of negative mental status than all other conditions.

Research completed by Zhou, Wu, Meng, and Kang indicates that the acoustics in hospitals have a significant effect on stress experienced by patients.  The researchers share that “Patients in general wards are often exposed to excessive levels of noise and activity, and high levels of noise have been associated with depression and anxiety.

Researchers used scents to enhance nurses' at-work experiences.  A team lead by Reven determined that “aromatherapy may reduce nurses’ on-the-job feelings of stress, anxiety, exhaustion and being overwhelmed. . . . In an eight-week study, [Reven] and her colleagues . . . provided aromatherapy patches to 19 nurses who worked at the Infusion Center at the WVU Cancer Institute.   The nurses affixed the patches to the badges they wore on lanyards around their necks.