A Study of Mental Health and the Individual and Neighborhood Factors Affecting It (Case Study: Tehran Citizens)

This article aims to study the relationship between some individual and neighborhood factors and mental health among 18-65-year-old citizens of Tehran. The survey method has been used the data has been gathered from 448 citizens in 25 neighborhoods in the city through multistage cluster sampling technique. The data has been analyzed using SPSS. To study the simultaneous effects of individual and neighborhood factors, a 2-level linear regression model has been employed. The results indicate that the level of mental health among Tehran citizens is 4.46 (on a 1.2-6-point scale) and medium to high; and based on taking bivariate analysis, all individual level factors, including respondents’ age (positively), SES (positively), healthy lifestyle (positively), marital status (in favor of married), and gender (in favor of men) are statistically related to mental health of the respondents. The results of the fitted 2-level model show that all individual level predictors, except age, have remained significant predictors of mental health at individual level, and the social characteristics of the neighborhood positively and significantly affected the mental health at level 2 of the model. Individual level factors accounted for 13.23%, and social characteristics of the neighborhood for 33.89% of the mental health variance at individual and neighborhood levels, respectively.