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Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on people's mental wellbeing. Few studies have investigated how the neighborhood environment might help to moderate the mental health impact in a natural disaster context. We aim to investigate the unequal impact of the pandemic on mental healt...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ma, Liang, Huang, Yan, Liu, Tao
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9443661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36092492
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104162
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author Ma, Liang
Huang, Yan
Liu, Tao
author_facet Ma, Liang
Huang, Yan
Liu, Tao
author_sort Ma, Liang
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on people's mental wellbeing. Few studies have investigated how the neighborhood environment might help to moderate the mental health impact in a natural disaster context. We aim to investigate the unequal impact of the pandemic on mental health between different population groups, and the role of the neighborhood environment in alleviating this impact. We collected survey data (n=2,741) on mental health, neighborhood environment, and pandemic-related behaviors in Beijing metropolitan region between July 10 and 28, 2020, and then applied the partial proportional odds model. Overall, we found that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the lower-income people. The lower-income residents experienced a greater psychological impact than the higher-income residents. We further found that distance to an urban park was a key built environment variable that moderates mental health impact. Residents who lived near urban parks were 4.2 to 4.6% less likely to report an increase in negative emotions, and therefore are more resilient to the mental health impact. In addition to the built environment, a cohesive neighborhood environment may have also helped to mitigate the negative mental health impacts. These findings can inform planning policies that aim to promote healthy and resilient communities.
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spelling pubmed-94436612022-09-06 Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment Ma, Liang Huang, Yan Liu, Tao Sustain Cities Soc Article The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on people's mental wellbeing. Few studies have investigated how the neighborhood environment might help to moderate the mental health impact in a natural disaster context. We aim to investigate the unequal impact of the pandemic on mental health between different population groups, and the role of the neighborhood environment in alleviating this impact. We collected survey data (n=2,741) on mental health, neighborhood environment, and pandemic-related behaviors in Beijing metropolitan region between July 10 and 28, 2020, and then applied the partial proportional odds model. Overall, we found that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the lower-income people. The lower-income residents experienced a greater psychological impact than the higher-income residents. We further found that distance to an urban park was a key built environment variable that moderates mental health impact. Residents who lived near urban parks were 4.2 to 4.6% less likely to report an increase in negative emotions, and therefore are more resilient to the mental health impact. In addition to the built environment, a cohesive neighborhood environment may have also helped to mitigate the negative mental health impacts. These findings can inform planning policies that aim to promote healthy and resilient communities. Elsevier Ltd. 2022-12 2022-09-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9443661/ /pubmed/36092492 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104162 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Ma, Liang
Huang, Yan
Liu, Tao
Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title_full Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title_fullStr Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title_full_unstemmed Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title_short Unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: Role of the neighborhood environment
title_sort unequal impact of the covid-19 pandemic on mental health: role of the neighborhood environment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9443661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36092492
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104162
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