New directions in neighbourhood research—a commentary on Lovasi et al. (2016): Cause and context: place-based approaches to investigate how environments affect mental health

Excerpt

We now live in a world where our sense of place is no longer fixed but increasingly fluid and subject to rapid change. Two large scale population changes in particular, urbanisation and migration, have become central to debates about how we live in the twenty-first century. Both have important mental health correlates and, as inherently spatial phenomena, both present a specific set of challenges for psychiatric epidemiology. Given the relevance of these topics it is not surprising that research into the effect of neighbourhood level factors on health has expanded dramatically in recent decades. One recent review of neighbourhood studies uncovered 1369 relevant papers published in journals linked to epidemiology in the 15 years since 1990 [1]. This is partly due to more data being available along with the widespread adoption of statistical methods, such as multilevel modelling, to facilitate analysis. However, despite the volume of published research, it is argued, few studies have been able to reach any definitive conclusions as to the relevance of neighborhood risk factors [1]. …