The role of neighbourhood conditions in mental health responses to the Covid-19 lockdown

The Covid-19 lockdown has underscored how important neighbourhoods are for our mental health and wellbeing. Neighbourhood characteristics like urbanicity, greenspace, deprivation, and social fragmentation create very different lockdown experiences, even between neighbours living streets apart. This project will investigate the role of neighbourhood conditions in mental health responses to lockdown. Data are from a longitudinal cohort of >14,000 individuals born in Bristol and surrounding areas and followed from birth for 30 years, coupled with novel data from a Covid-19 questionnaire completed by >7,500 participants. First, I will examine associations of urbanicity, greenspace, deprivation, and social fragmentation with participants' symptoms of anxiety and depression during and after lockdown. Second, I will control analyses comprehensively for confounds such as poverty using propensity score matching. Third, I will examine the interplay between neighbourhood conditions and individual-level factors including age, housing, household composition and garden access in terms of mental health responses to lockdown.