Relationship between Residential Environment Characteristics and Residents Depression: a review article

With respect to high depression prevalence and its risks which affects people’s individual and social life, we endeavor to identify related residential environment factors to be able to utilize it towards promoting residential environment using depression reduction approach. The present research has been performed aiming the review of performed studies with the relation between the characteristics of residential area and depression of settlers.

Methods and Materials:

 In this review article to find documents related to the subject of the article, authors assessed previous published articles regularly between 2005 to 2020 about relationship between residential environment and depression and also investigated the studies on Pub Med, Elsevier, Google Scholar, Isi, MDPI, BMC, Magiran, and SID using related key words such as: relationship between built environment, physical environment, living environment, neighborhood, interiors and exteriors, natural environment, residential environment, physical environment with mental health (depression, mental disorders).

Among 99 selected articles about the aforementioned subject, most of them were cross-sectional articles and approved meaningful relationship between at least one of the characteristics of residential environment and depression. From among different aspects of environment characteristics, lack of access to green areas, neighborhood, noise pollution, specifications of built environment, lighting, and walking facilities were more related to depression and this relationship showed some inconsistencies for the beauty of environment, urban environment, access to services, population density and psychological distance interference.

Reviewing the results indicates that characteristics of residential environment in many aspects relate to depression therefore its consideration to promote mental health (depression reduction) of residents of these environments would be necessary.