WP 8 will study how urban environmental factors and mental health conditions determine older person’s adaption to the environment. It will study how older persons with and without mental health problems interact with their outdoor built environment, using GPS, accelerometers and smartphone survey technology

Objectives

  1. To assess how depressive mood and stress influence the way a cohort of community-dwelling older individuals in the city of Paris spatially navigate, alone or with the support of others, and interact with specific features of the outdoor environment (services, green spaces, collective transport systems)
  2. To describe, using a smartphone survey, the perceptions of older persons about the physical environments visited, in function of their individual-level depressive status, and in function of their preceding momentary depressive mood as assessed with a smartphone
  3. To investigate which physical characteristics of residential and non-residential environments are associated with depression (between-person comparison)
  4. To investigate which residential and non-residential physical environment factors are associated with within-person variations in depressive symptomatology and perceived stress (assessed using smartphone technology) and with within-person variations in galvanic skin response (as a marker of stress)

Work package leader Basile Chaix, INSERM -French Institute of Health and Medical Research