No news, and certainly no strong evidence cited. But definitely
something for consideration.
*Natalia**
*
http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/living-cities-may-literally-be-driving-us-insane.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Simply living in cities may be driving us insane. Or at least making us
more likely to develop schizophrenia or various forms of psychosis.
That's the fear propelling a growing body of research, which seeks to
document the psychological effects of growing up and living in dense
urban areas. If scientists' fears are confirmed, it'd be quite a blast
of bad news, especially when paired with the fact that the world is fast
moving out of rural areas and into cities. More than half the world
lives in cities now, remember.
The basic premise is this: people who spend their lives in cities are
more prone to be subjected to longer periods stress, and, after
prolonged exposure, their bodies aren't good at tuning it out. The
science journal Nature explains
<http://www.nature.com/news/stress-and-the-city-urban-decay-1.11556>:
Considered from an evolutionary standpoint, the physiological stress
response is definitely a good thing: it helps mammals to survive ...
Problems arise when the stress response doesn't switch off.
Stress-hormone levels that stay too high for too long cause high
blood pressure and suppress the immune system. And, although the
mechanisms are unknown, scientists agree that severe or prolonged
stress also raise the risk of psychiatric disease --- most brutally
in those who have a genetic predisposition, and when the stress
occurs while the brain is still developing. In theory, then, the
ceaseless challenges of the city could produce this kind of damaging
stress. Some fear that they could end up driving an increase in
mental illness around the world.
Now, there have only been a handful of studies that have actually linked
rising rates of mental health to increasing urbanization --- the most
convincing one was published in 2003. Called the Camberwell study,
here's what it found:
In 1965, health authorities in Camberwell, a bustling quarter of
London's southward sprawl, began an unusual tally. They started to
keep case records for every person in the area who was diagnosed
with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or any other
psychiatric condition. Decades later, when psychiatrists looked back
across the data, they saw a surprising trend: the incidence of
schizophrenia had more or less doubled, from around 11 per 100,000
inhabitants per year in 1965 to 23 per 100,000 in 1997 --- a period
when there was no such rise in the general population.
One possible explanation was that exposure to the city itself, and its
myriad stresses, was driving the decline in mental health. Statistics
collected in the United States and Germany seem to corroborate the
finding. Nature notes that "In Germany, the number of sick days taken
for psychiatric ailments doubled between 2000 and 2010; in North
America, up to 40% of disability claims for work absence are related to
depression, according to some estimates."
But nobody's making any conclusions --- cities are vast, complex human
ecosystems, and it's extremely difficult to pinpoint how, if, or why
living in them may give rise to mental health problems. There's still a
ton of study to be done, and there may be more specific reasons that
city residents are suffering from mental health woes. So, scientists
have embarked on ambitious projects to map entire metropolises, follow
citizens with mobile app tech as they go to work, and to better
understand how the urban environment causes stress.
One thing seems to be certain; better-planned cities, with ample green
spaces and areas in which residents can find relief from the bustle are
preferable to the concrete jungle. Research
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8307024.stm> in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health found that city dwellers who lived
closer to green spaces exhibited better mental health; they were less
likely to be stressed or to suffer from more serious ailments.
Findings like that should be taken seriously; we've firmly entered the
age of the city --- cities are now the way most humanfolk are choosing
to organize their societies. And that's a good thing; cities are more
efficient, use less energy, generate less waste and pollution than
sprawl does. And they can certainly be built in pleasing, less-stressful
ways. If we start studying how cities impact mental health now, we all
might be a good deal happier down the line, when everybody's living in them.
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