Outdoor Environments for Health and Well-being MSc in Environmental Psychology

Welcome to an international programme that gives you the opportunity to investigate how outdoor environments can be designed and used as a way of promoting health and well-being. The in-depth courses will teach you how different locations work for different groups of people and how humans perceive, use and are affected by nature and other elements in the outdoor environment. Would you like to gain knowledge useful in planning for an attractive outdoor environments, that activate children, young people and the elderly? Then this is the programme for you! 

Environmental psychology and landscape architecture are the starting points of this programme, which provides essential knowledge for urban planning and for the design of outdoor environments for healthcare services, schools, housing and public environments.  

With a Master’s degree in Environmental Psychology you will have the skills needed to take on strategic roles in the development and more active use of physical environments in public domains, as well as adapting them to specific user groups, for example schools and healthcare environments. 

This programme is a distance-based education, meaning admittance to this program will not make you eligible for a residence permit in Sweden. 

The programme includes 2-4 meetings per course. These meetings will take place online in the autumn of 2021 and spring 2022. Some physical meetings on campus may become relevant in the spring of 2022.

This programme is aimed at students from different academic or professional fields. It provides scientific perspectives and concepts within the relevant subjects in an interdisciplinary context which can be used both to understand and explain the interactions between people and the physical outdoor environment and to apply the acquired knowledge in different societal contexts.

Examples of subjects include the interdisciplinary research discipline that studies nature-assisted therapy/health promotion and the role of outdoor environments for learning and development, e.g. within outdoor education and habilitation. It also includes broader perspectives such as spatial planning or landscape design informed by environmental psychology. Special attention is given the importance of outdoor environments for individual development, quality of life, well-being and health.

You will also study national and international approaches to integration of green environments in an urbanisation/densification context, focusing on public health through access to natural environments. The health aspects will cover promotion as well as illness prevention and treatment. These concepts include an understanding of the influence of green environments with indirect (e.g. increased physical activity) as well as direct (e.g. reduced negative effects of stress) health effects.

The programme also deals with the specific role of public space in relation to emotions and restorative mechanisms important for public health. Students are given assignments to practise various methods used to survey the use, experience and effects of different outdoor environments such as gardens, parks, forests and other types of natural environments and public spaces, including the role of animals in everyday life.

Each course combine mandatory campus meetings with tasks carried out independently and/or in groups. The different campus meetings can be held at different SLU campuses.

When applying, you can choose to study the programme full-time or part-time.

The skills and competence acquired on this programme are of strategic use in the development of sustainable societies in which plants, animals and other elements of nature are actively used to counteract stress and to support integration, rehabilitation and the development of healthy lifestyles. The programme prepares you for taking on strategic roles in the development and more active use of physical environments in public domains as well as adapting them to specific user groups, for example schools and healthcare environments.