At the 10th European Public Health Conference in Stockholm, Irina Motoc presented her work on the long term association of neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics with depression and anxiety in the Longitudinal Aging Study of Amsterdam (LASA), one of the Mindmap cohort studies. Five separate measures of neighbourhood socioeconomic position (NSEP) were considered: neighbourhood index of socioeconomic position, average income per resident in the neighbourhood, percentage of persons in the neighbourhood with a low income, average house prices in the neighbourhood and percentage of immigrants in the neighbourhood. The results indicate that neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics are not associated with depression and anxiety over a period of 15 years, except for percentage of immigrants.  A higher percentage of immigrants in the neighbourhood is associated with an increase in depression and anxiety scores in older Dutch adults.  However the magnitude of the association with depression decreases consistently over time and the association with anxiety decreases over time as well. In conclusion, measures of social processes, such as social cohesion, might provide more powerful explanatory effects of mental health outcomes than neighbourhood socioeconomic structural features.

https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckx187.156