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Journal article
Cause and context: place-based approaches to investigate how environments affect mental health
SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHIATRIC EPIDEMIOLOGY, v 51(12), pp 1571-1579
01 Dec 2016
PMID: 27787585
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Our surroundings affect our mood, our recovery from stress, our behavior, and, ultimately, our mental health. Understanding how our surroundings influence mental health is central to creating healthy cities. However, the traditional observational methods now dominant in the psychiatric epidemiology literature are not sufficient to advance such an understanding. In this essay we consider potential alternative strategies, such as randomizing people to places, randomizing places to change, or harnessing natural experiments that mimic randomized experiments.
We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these methodological approaches with respect to (1) defining the most relevant scale and characteristics of context, (2) disentangling the effects of context from the effects of individuals' preferences and prior health, and (3) generalizing causal effects beyond the study setting.
Promising alternative strategies include creating many small-scale randomized place-based trials, using the deployment of place-based changes over time as natural experiments, and using fluctuations in the changes in our surroundings in combination with emerging data collection technologies to better understand how surroundings influence mood, behavior, and mental health.
Improving existing research strategies will require interdisciplinary partnerships between those specialized in mental health, those advancing new methods for place effects on health, and those who seek to optimize the design of local environments.
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Details
- Title
- Cause and context: place-based approaches to investigate how environments affect mental health
- Creators
- Gina S. Lovasi - Drexel UniversityStephen J. Mooney - Harborview Injury Prevention and Research CenterPeter Muennig - Department of Health Policy & Management Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health , New York , USA.Charles DiMaggio - New York University
- Publication Details
- SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHIATRIC EPIDEMIOLOGY, v 51(12), pp 1571-1579
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- Number of pages
- 9
- Grant note
- R01HD087460 / EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) R01HD087460; K01HD067390; 5T32HD057822-07 / National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Urban Health Collaborative
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000389608800001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84992751935
- Other Identifier
- 991019169702304721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Psychiatry