Trauma and Post-Traumatic Outcomes: Highlighting the role played by Exposure and Connectedness to Nature

Exposure to traumatic events, such as direct or threatened exposure to physical assault, serious injury, or sexual violation, have been shown to have long-term detrimental impacts on individual well-being. It is, hence, essential to discover and empirically determine public-health resources for wider, non-clinical samples who may have experienced PTE's. Although available treatment modalities have been well-established among clinically diagnosed samples, there is limited representation of trauma experiences within the general population. Further, current interventions remain inaccessible for individuals who lack adequate resources. This study explores whether nature could be a public health resource for non-clinical samples who may have experienced Potentially Traumatic Events (PTEs). Specifically, this quantitative and cross-sectional research investigates how exposure to and connectedness with nature may mediate the relationship between exposure to PTEs and Complex-PTSD (C-PTSD) symptoms. Participants completed an online survey comprising the Life Events Checklist, Complex Trauma Inventory, and Connectedness to Nature Scale. The participants’ exposure to green space was calculated using NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) scores from satellite imagery of reported zip codes. The results indicate that while exposure to PTEs significantly predicted C-PTSD symptoms, this association is not moderated by Connectedness to Nature or Green Space Exposure. Although previous literature has linked nature exposure to positive mental health outcomes, especially in the case of stress recovery, our study finds that this association does not replicate in the case of adverse post-traumatic outcomes, wherein nature-related variables do not play a role in predicting or moderating C-PTSD symptoms.