Open water swimming has gained a reputation as a tough outdoor habit, yet a national Scottish survey suggests many swimmers value it most for how it affects the mind. In a 2023 study in PLOS ONE, researchers analyzed answers from 717 swimmers and found that mental wellbeing was the most important self-reported benefit in every surveyed age band except one. People older than 65 were the only group more likely to rank physical wellbeing first.
Numbers elsewhere in the study add a second layer to that result. Most respondents still saw outdoor swimming as physically useful, yet the survey kept pointing back to mood, calm, confidence and personal reset. The paper also found differences in how swimmers related to their surroundings, especially when comparing sea, river and lake settings.
The article offers a wide look at a growing pastime, though it remains a cross-sectional survey built from self-reports rather than a clinical trial. The findings describe what swimmers said they experienced and what they feared. Cold water alone cannot be isolated as the cause and the paper leaves open how non-swimmers or occasional visitors would respond.
The survey reached swimmers across most of Scotland
Researchers designed an 18-question online survey for adults who swim outdoors in Scotland’s sea, rivers, lochs and lakes. According to the full paper at PubMed Central, the link was posted in a large public Facebook community for Scottish wild swimmers, then left open long enough to collect national coverage across 30 of Scotland’s 32 regions.
Geography in the sample looked fairly local. Twenty-nine percent of participants usually traveled no more than 1 kilometer to swim, 53 percent usually stayed within 5 kilometers and 86 percent remained within 20 kilometers. Open-water swimming in this dataset therefore appears tied less to long sport tourism trips than to repeat use of nearby places.
Preferred settings split unevenly. Half of respondents favored lochs or lakes, 44 percent preferred the sea and 6 percent chose rivers. Duration also varied by setting: 67 percent of people who usually swam for more than an hour were lake swimmers, while shorter sessions of up to 30 minutes were more often linked to the sea.
Demographic limits also need to stay in view. The authors note that women were overrepresented in the sample and household income was high relative to the broader Scottish population. Any broad claim about all Scots, all swimmers or all health outcomes would run beyond what the study can support.
Mental wellbeing led almost every age group
Results from the age analysis are the reason the paper stands out. When participants had to choose the most important benefit of open-water swimming from a short list, mental wellbeing came first in every surveyed age group except among adults older than 65. For that group, physical wellbeing edged ahead.
The paper reports a strong statistical association between age and the benefit people ranked first, with a probability value below 0.001. Even without wading into the math, the pattern is easy to follow: younger and middle-aged swimmers often framed the water as a tool for mood, relief and mental steadiness, while the oldest group placed more weight on bodily benefit.
Swim style created another dividing line. The most important perceived benefit also shifted with a swimmer’s typical style. People describing their usual outing as a goal-focused swim were much more likely than others to put physical benefits first, with 42 percent of that group doing so. Swimmers describing a social swim, a quick dip or a relaxing float leaned much more heavily toward mental wellbeing.
Several other factors were less influential. The paper found no significant association between the top-ranked benefit and annual income, the distance traveled to reach the water, the time usually spent swimming or how often the person swam. A regular short swimmer and a regular long swimmer could still give the same main reason for getting in.
Risk awareness centered on water conditions and judgment
Outdoor swimming is often discussed through simple images of bravery or danger, but the survey paints a more practical picture. Eighty-six percent of respondents said they assess possible risks to their health from the environment before swimming. Eighty-nine percent said that, when thinking about their last swim, they believed they had a good understanding of the site’s water quality.
Those numbers leave plenty of room for error in personal judgment. Risk awareness still appears as part of the routine rather than an afterthought. The paper also asked whether people had ever cut short or canceled a swim because of water-quality concerns, which links the mental-health conversation to the condition of the water itself.
Fear of the environment showed its own age pattern. The authors report a significant association between age and wider health-risk concerns, with 35 to 44 year olds expressing more concern than other groups. Drowning was treated separately from those wider concerns, which helps explain why the paper is as much about judgment and perception as it is about simple hazard counts.
Public guidance adds useful context here. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency monitors designated bathing waters and publishes water-quality information so people can make informed choices before entering the water. The survey sits beside that testing system and shows that many swimmers already think in those terms when deciding whether to continue, shorten or skip a session.
Lake swimmers worried more about environmental damage
The strongest environmental split in the paper involved preferred setting. Participants who favored lakes reported greater concern about possible environmental damage from the rising popularity of open-water swimming than those who preferred the sea or rivers. The association was statistically significant, even though the study leaves several possible reasons in play.
One practical explanation is exposure to place. Lake swimmers often use smaller inland sites repeatedly and repeated visits may make vegetation wear, crowding, litter or bank erosion easier to notice. Sea swimmers can also see damage, of course, but a broader coastline may spread activity over a wider area.
Even with that concern, most respondents saw open-water swimming as a small environmental risk overall. Seventy-three percent rated those risks as minimal. The paper therefore describes a community that often values the environment, notices trade-offs, yet still tends to believe its own activity remains relatively light in impact.
Broader blue-space research helps explain why the authors connect these findings to policy. A review in Science of the Total Environment argued that freshwater blue space deserves more public-health attention, while a 2023 paper in Communications Earth & Environment linked coastal visits and proximity with better health. The Scottish swimmer survey adds a narrower question: what do active users think they gain and what costs do they notice?
Why the paper could matter for health policy, with caution
Researchers close the study by pointing toward nature-based health interventions, including forms of social prescribing. NHS England describes social prescribing as a way to connect people with community activities that can support health and wellbeing. A swimmer survey alone cannot settle whether outdoor swimming belongs in large-scale prescribing programs, yet it does explain why the idea keeps surfacing in public-health discussions.
Any move from interest to policy would need careful filtering. The study was observational, it relied on self-reported answers and it sampled people who were already engaged enough to join a swimming community and answer a survey. Beginners, people with limited access to safe water, those with health conditions or residents outside Scotland could weigh the risks and rewards very differently.
Season also matters. Data collection happened during a single month in the summer of 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weather, daylight, water temperature, local crowding and pandemic habits could all have affected what respondents remembered and how they ranked the benefits of a recent swim.
Policy discussions therefore need two ideas at once. First, the survey offers rare large-sample evidence that swimmers themselves often place mental benefit at the center of the experience. Second, the evidence remains descriptive. It maps perception, preference and concern. Medical effect sizes stay unresolved and the paper leaves open whether the same pattern would appear in colder months, in other countries or among people still deciding whether to enter open water for the first time.
Seen on those terms, the study is valuable because it joins public health to environmental management without flattening either one. Open-water swimmers in Scotland described enjoyment, recovery and bodily benefit, yet the survey’s clearest age pattern still favored the mind. For anyone tracking the rise of blue-space recreation, that ranking may be the most revealing number in the whole paper.
