Really appreciate this prompt, as it’s at the forefront of my experiences with nature and iNat as well!
I have ADHD and OCD and have also struggled in recent years with situational depression (as opposed to chronic). I’ve always known that spending time out in nature can help me relax, clear my head, and feel emotionally and physically better, but my issues with motivation and executive function can make it really hard to actually do it consistently. Discovering iNat has been hugely helpful in that regard! It provides structure and direction to outdoors time, as well as the dopamine hits of successfully capturing an observation. It feels like a rare example of non-exploitative gamification (that also has tangible real-world benefits). For my ADHD brain, it’s been a fantastic motivator for outdoors time, making even sitting on my front stoop feel purposeful.
Beyond the motivation aspect, I’ve also really appreciated how iNat encourages me to slow down, pay very close attention to the details of my surroundings, and find wonder and beauty in them. It’s similar in some ways to therapeutic grounding techniques. OCD is essentially an anxiety disorder, so cultivating those habits has been beneficial to me. The other day, for example, I didn’t have the wherewithal to walk anywhere beyond the lawn outside my apartment, so I decided to examine the old maple tree out front in detail. To my surprise I found several types of moss and lichen I had never noticed before! That small exercise of grounding myself in the details of a familiar object worked wonders.
Anyway, those are some of my specific experiences with nature (and iNat!) improving my mental health, even outside the general benefits of contact with nature cited by some of the other folks in this thread. I don’t know where I’d be without it.