Intoxicated: men, mental health, wellbeing, and pollution in blue spaces

Evers, C

Intoxicated: men, mental health, wellbeing, and pollution in blue spaces

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Clifton Evers ORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).

Abstract

In this chapter, I use art-based autoethnography to explore a few gendered ways some men negotiate pollution as they strive for mental health and wellbeing in a blue space that is part of a compounding socio-ecological crisis. The study proceeds from Hannah Pitt’s (2018) argument for the importance of more relational perspective of blue space and any salutogenic claims. I argue that pollution shapes men’s experiences of nature-based recreation in blue spaces and subsequently how they strive for and experience mental health and wellbeing through such. By ‘blue spaces’ I am referring to “all visible outdoor, natural surface waters with potential to improve human health and wellbeing” (Britton et al., 2018: 2).