Neighborhood characteristics and depressive symptoms in an older population

Abstract

Objectives: We explored relationships between depressive symptoms and neighborhood environment measures including traffic safety, crime, social capital, and density of businesses in community-dwelling older adults from four different regions of the United States.

Method: The Healthy Aging Research Network walking study is a cross-sectional study of 884 adults aged 65+, which included a 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale of depressive symptoms, demographics, self-reported neighborhood perceptions, and objective neighborhood data.

Results: After adjusting for individual covariates, reports of neighborhood crime, unsafe traffic, and unwillingness of neighbors to help each other were significantly positively associated with depressive symptoms among participants.

Conclusion: This research suggests an association between self-reported depressive symptoms and the social and built environment; examining causal association requires additional longitudinal research in diverse populations of older adults.

Keywords:

• depression
• built environment
• neighborhood
• older adults
• social capital

Acknowledgements

This research is the result of work conducted by the CDC HAN. The CDC HAN is a Prevention Research Centers program funded by the CDC Healthy Aging Program. Efforts were supported in part by cooperative agreements from CDC's Prevention Research Centers Program: U48-DP-000033, 001908, 000059, 001944, 000048, and 000025. The contents of this manuscript are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Active Living Research Program [grant number 052515]. We used some data from the RAND Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD), which was funded by grant 1-P50-ES012383 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. For further information on CPHHD, see www.rand.org/health/centers/pophealth/index.html.