Dr. Dougal Sutherland: How listening to birds can treat depression

Building on Jack’s love of birds and bird-feeding in his garden – new research shows that listening to birdsong may actually benefit your mental health and improve sadness and depression. 

Researchers took people with and without depression and then made them feel sad in the laboratory by playing movie clips. Sidenote – I read another study where they made people feel sad by playing a piece of Russian classical music slowed down to half speed and matched with sad faces! It’s not uncommon in psyc studies to mess around with people’s emotions and then make them feel better. 

Then taught people mindfulness breathing or gave them opportunity to listen to birdsong. Both of these treatments led to people feeling happier. Listening to birdsong helped peoples heart rates to return to normal functioning, indicating it was good for the body as well as the mind. 

What are the implications of this? Both are helpful at improving people’s mood. Mindfulness requires more effort from a person and learning a skill so might be harder to get up and running in the first place. But of course once you’ve learnt it you can do it whenever you want – the ideal self-help tool. 

Listening to birdsong requires  much less effort on behalf of someone – you just lie back and do it! This might be particularly useful for someone who is quite down and has little energy or motivation to do much. Shows how our emotional state can be changed both intentionally and on-purpose, and just automatically 

Also birdsong is free and possibly easily available – but you do need to be near some trees. This could have implications for things like urban design and building green spaces near and around new housing developments. 

This builds on a growing amount of research showing the benefits of nature-based interventions for improving mental health. In the UK these are called “green prescriptions” – things like gardening and going fishing – like the UK TV show “Mortimer and Whitehouse - Gone Fishing”. Interestingly, there was a recent NZ study that showed fishing was really helpful in reducing depression, psyc distress, and anxiety Media release: World's largest angling mental health study reveals remarkable benefits - Fish & Game 

So get out there – feed the birds and then listen to them sing. Garden or go fishing. It’s good for the mind as well as the body! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be and it's time to catch up with clinical
psychologist Google Sutherland from Umbrella well Being, who's been looking
at some really interesting research that shows that listening to
bird song may benefit your mental health and improve sadness
and depression. Googles with us this morning, get a cure
to Jack.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, very well, thank you. It's funny. Oh, this is
one of those things that can you can imagine people
are just like right off as being kind of trivial,
but then if you think about it for a moment,
you think, actually, yeah, it kind of makes sense that
listening to bird song might make me feel a bit better.
So tell us about this research.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, So the research came out. They got people who
were both depressed and not depressed, and then, as we
want to do in psychology land, we made them feel
even worse by evoking sadness in them by playing them
through really sad movie clips, so that they not only
are you depressed, but now we're making you feel really
sad on top of that as well. So they made

(01:05):
people feel sad, and then what can we do to
relieve the sadness. They get. One group they trained them
in mindfulness and the other group they just exposed them
to listening to bird songs, and both both groups benefited
and and actually for the bird song people, they also
their heart rates the physiological heart rates were improved as well.

(01:25):
So it seems that was good for the heart and
for the good for the mind and the body as well.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's interesting. So when they were playing it, I don't
know if you have this detail, do you know if
they were playing them recordings or if they were just
sitting them outside.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
No, no, no, that no, no, they were playing I
believe they were playing it was live bird song. Adding
oh yeah, so I think they were actually, you know,
out there listening to birds. I think it was a
confined environment in terms of you know, they had to
they were in like an avery or something like that.
But it was it was live bird song from what

(01:59):
I can what I can make out, I.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Wonder how you can differentiate between listening to bird song
and then singing.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Birds or yeah, yeah they do. But it's interesting. One
of the things they kind of thought was to that, yes,
both are good, the mindfulness and the listening to birds,
but sometimes if you're really deeply depressed, then having energy
to do anything, including engaging in psychological therapy, can be

(02:24):
a real you know, it can be more than you know,
more than what you're able to do. And so so
mindfulness is obviously a very sort of deliberate sort of
skill that you that you kind of got to put
into place, whereas listening to bird song is quite a
passive thing. You don't have to really do anything. It
just you know, you just sit there and listen, and
and and so it could be a useful sort of

(02:47):
I wouldn't say I'd be betting every betting the house
on it, but you could certainly add it in. There's
something that people can do just be exposed to you
don't You can just sit there and listen. You don't
have to do anything, which might be quite a relief
if your feeling particularly down, you know, and you just
don't have that energy. So yeah, I thought I thought
it was an encouraging sort of and and and I
hues of sort of going back to nature in a way.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean it's a yeah, like
I said, it feels kind of intuitive. It's funny. I
have been finding without eight months old then when he
gets really upset. He has he gets really upset from
time to time, and especially in the evenings at the
end of the day, and he'll scream down the house
and that kind of thing. And often I have been
picking him up from his high tear or wherever he is,

(03:29):
taking him outside and just like giving him two minutes
with you know, being outdoors and kind of looking at
a tree or something like that. Yeah, it's amazing the
extent where it calms them down.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yes, yeah, Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it. It's like it
feels like we've kind of lost touch with some of
those the benefits of nature as we become more more urban.
And I realized for some people it's you know, if
you're living in a block of flats or an apartment,
it is really difficult to get to that. In the UK,
they do things like green prescriptions, where they'll, you know,
they'll they'll they'll give you a prescription to go out

(04:02):
and they do things like, you know, tell you to
go fishing and you know, just out there and be active.
But just because of the real benefit there seems to
be just from being out in nature.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I find the same thing, like if I even it
can be something so simple as well. You don't have
to be like in a perfect unspoiled native bush or
anything like, even if I just got into the backyard
and do a little bit of gardening honestly, a little
bit of weeding with you know, with a good iHeart
podcast or something. And I'm yeah, it's amazing how it
kind of has that Yeah, it is a yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
And there was a big study in New Zealand actually
about the benefits of fishing too, Like they touted it
as the biggest study in the world looking at the
benefits of fishing for for mental health, and they found
that really, you know, improved people's mood, reduced anxiety, reduced
psychological distress, and you know, they were going out and

(04:50):
just just fishing. And I think there's really something in that,
isn't there about getting back into nature and getting that
contact with nature that we seem to be losing a
bit as we become more urbanized.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah. I wonder too if it's just it's kind of
like mindfulness without knowing it, you know, not being yeah,
you know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've tricked you into being mindful.
You know, you're just you're just focusing on one thing
that's all you're aware of, You're it's it's it's just
a calm sort of content place that you're connecting with. Yeah,
I agree. I think there's some sort of strong overlaps
with those sorts of things that it's very much about.

(05:31):
And there is something that we get from being in nature.
You know, thirty minutes I did hear thirty minutes a
day is if you or not a day, but little
spells of thirty minutes in nature if you really want
to optimize your your the benefit that you get from
being out there, little little blocks of thirty minutes and
at least three hours a week is the ideal apparently.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Okay, yeah, thirty minutes a day that that's like maybe achievable.
I think that's yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
And it doesn't have to be every day just you know,
as you said before, you know, but a gardening or
you might go for a walk or and it doesn't
have to be every day, but trying to get sort
of around three three and a half hours per week
and doing that in blocks of thirty seems to be
better than just sort of a quick five minute I mean,
five minutes is fine, you know, but if you really
want to get the maximize benefit out out of it.

(06:19):
At least a thirty minute burst outside in nature apparently
is really is what we're looking for. So that's great.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Hey, thank you so much, Dogle. I appreciate it as always.
Google someone from Umbrella Well Being. Yeah, it does feel
like it makes sense. But if you are looking for
an excuse to ask for a second bird feeder for Christmas,
maybe this could be just it. Right, track a few
more birds in the backyard. It's good for everyone.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
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