1. Urbanicity, biological stress system functioning and mental health in adolescents
- Author
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Evans, Brittany E., Huizink, Anja C., Greaves-Lord, Kirstin, Tulen, Joke H. M., Roelofs, Karin, van der Ende, Jan, Clinical Developmental Psychology, APH - Health Behaviors & Chronic Diseases, APH - Mental Health, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry / Psychology, and Psychiatry
- Subjects
Male ,230 Affective Neuroscience ,Urban Population ,Emotions ,Social Sciences ,Pituitary-Adrenal System ,Adolescents ,Biochemistry ,Cortisol ,Experimental Psychopathology and Treatment ,Families ,Heart Rate ,environmental factor ,behavioral stress ,Medicine and Health Sciences ,Psychology ,Public and Occupational Health ,Lipid Hormones ,Children ,physiological stress ,Psychiatry ,social stress ,longitudinal study ,Hälsovetenskaper ,adolescent health ,Socioeconomic Aspects of Health ,Mental Health ,female ,Medicine ,Neurovetenskaper ,mental health ,Research Article ,Adolescent ,hypothalamus hypophysis adrenal system ,Science ,prevalence ,Cardiology ,Psychological Stress ,self report ,structural equation modeling ,Psykiatri ,Article ,SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being ,male ,Stress, Physiological ,Mental Health and Psychiatry ,Health Sciences ,Humans ,cross-sectional study ,Interpersonal Relations ,controlled study ,human ,neighborhood ,Steroid Hormones ,Behavior ,emotional stress ,Psykologi (exklusive tillämpad psykologi) ,autonomic nervous system ,Neurosciences ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Hormones ,social status ,Health Care ,Psychology (excluding Applied Psychology) ,Age Groups ,adolescent ,People and Places ,Population Groupings ,urban area - Abstract
Growing up in an urban area has been associated with an increased chance of mental health problems in adults, but less is known about this association in adolescents. We examined whether current urbanicity was associated with mental health problems directly and indirectly via biological stress system functioning. Participants (n = 323) were adolescents from the Dutch general population. Measures included home and laboratory assessments of autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning, neighborhood-level urbanicity and socioeconomic status, and mother- and adolescent self-reported mental health problems. Structural equation models showed that urbanicity was not associated with mental health problems directly. Urbanicity was associated with acute autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity such that adolescents who lived in more urban areas showed blunted biological stress reactivity. Furthermore, there was some evidence for an indirect effect of urbanicity on mother-reported behavioral problems via acute autonomic nervous system reactivity. Urbanicity was not associated with overall autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity or basal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning. Although we observed some evidence for associations between urbanicity, biological stress reactivity and mental health problems, most of the tested associations were not statistically significant. Measures of long-term biological stress system functioning may be more relevant to the study of broader environmental factors such as urbanicity., Funding Agencies:Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development 3116.0002Behavioural Science Institute Fellowship (Radboud University)
- Published
- 2020