Watching birds and listening to their songs are soothing. In a latest study, a team of researchers found just how useful these might be for people’s mental health—even for those with mental health conditions.

A growing body of evidence has been showing the advantages of nature on people’s mental health, the researchers noted of their study, published in Scientific Reports. Nonetheless, much of the literature is targeted on interactions with green spaces corresponding to trees, parks and forests, while others also cover “blue spaces”‘ corresponding to lakes.

“While these studies have led to growing appreciation of the mental health advantages of nature generally, we all know little in regards to the specific features inside green and blue spaces that are driving these advantages,” they wrote.

And for his or her study, they focused on a facet that they are saying “has captivated humans over the centuries and yet has received little or no scientific attention: birdlife.”

For his or her work, the researchers used an app called Urban Mind to gather data from 1,292 participants from everywhere in the world, though most of them were from the U.K., U.S., and the European Union.

Using the app, the participants were asked thrice a day whether or not they could see or hear birds, King’s College London noted in a news release. Their “current” mental well-being was also assessed, while the researchers also collected information on any diagnoses of mental health conditions.

Among the many researchers, the hypothesis is that having encounters with birds on a day by day basis “can be related to higher mental well-being.” Indeed, they found that hearing or seeing birds proved to have advantages on the participants’ mental health, as their mental well-being was “significantly higher” once they saw or heard the creatures.

“On a regular basis encounters with birdlife were related to time-lasting improvements in mental wellbeing,” the researchers wrote. “These improvements were evident not only in healthy people but additionally in those with a diagnosis of depression, essentially the most common mental illness internationally.”

The mental well-being improvements, the university noted, could last for as much as eight hours. Further, they weren’t explained by other “co-occurring” aspects corresponding to trees, plants or waterways, as the outcomes remained significant even after the researchers took these aspects into consideration.

“Critically, the outcomes were still significant, providing support to a particular advantage of birdlife on mental wellbeing, above and beyond the well-established effect of green spaces,” they noted.

In keeping with the researchers, the outcomes show the potential advantages of birds in helping to enhance people’s mental health and thus could also be considered in the case of each mental healthcare and environmental/wildlife protection policies.

This is very necessary, they said, given the present decline in biodiversity. As an illustration, they noted a recent European report, which found that one in six bird species has already disappeared because the Nineteen Eighties.

“Our study provides an evidence base for creating and supporting biodiverse spaces that harbor birdlife, since that is strongly linked with our mental health,” study senior writer, Andrea Mechelli of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, said within the news release.

“As well as, the findings support the implementation of measures to extend opportunities for people to come back across birdlife, particularly for those living with mental health conditions corresponding to depression,” Mechelli added.

“To our knowledge, that is the primary study examining the impact of on a regular basis encounters with birds on mental wellbeing in real-time and real-life contexts,” the researchers wrote.