Baranyi, G., Pearce, J., Dibben, C., Curtis, S. (2018) 28 (suppl_4)1 November 2018. [SLS]
Other information: Background:
Although there is an increasing amount of research on the
effect of residential neighbourhoods on mental health, the
causal pathways through which place influences health are not
well understood. The aim of this study is to investigate whether
local crime is associated with psychological distress and how
area deprivation influences this relationship.
Methods:
We draw data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study, a census-
based nationally representative 5.3% sample of the Scottish
population. We included anonymized data for over 150,000
individual adults in our analysis. The primary outcomes were
self-reported mental health condition (2011 Census), as well as
prescriptions for antidepressant and anxiolytics medications
between 2009 and 2015 (NHS Scotland). Individual data were
linked with data on levels of crime and Carstairs Deprivation
Index for the person’s place of residence in 2011. Crime was
ranked in quintiles for data zones (populations of 500-1000
per zone). Multilevel logistic regression models were applied to
estimate the effect of local crime at data zone level.
Results:
Compared to the lowest crime neighbourhoods, increasing
crime rates were strongly associated with all measures of
psychological distress, even after controlling for individual
characteristics in the model. When models were further
adjusted for area level deprivation, the effect of crime
decreased, but remained significant for reported mental
health and antidepressant medication in the higher crime
quintiles (p < 0.05).
Conclusions:
Local crime level in the neighbourhood is associated with self-
reported mental illness and with prescriptions for common
mental disorders. It may act as a ‘wider determinant’ of mental
distress, independently of economic poverty and it may also
Available online: Link
Output from project: 2015_015
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