Neighborhood facilities may have reduced young people’s mental health and stress early in the pandemic

Youth as a population group during the COVID-19 pandemic reported the greatest decline in mental health compared to other age groups in Canada.

Research on youth mental health during the pandemic focuses on: Insufficient commitment to schoolwork, Loss of peer network, Missed milestone events and Challenging summer employment experience. However, little is known about how where young people lived during the pandemic played a role in changes in their mental health.

During the early months of the pandemic, there wasn’t much you could do in public, from walking in the park to ordering takeout food. Young people are attending school remotely and no longer participating in organized sports or indoor recreation.

For many people, that meant that daily activities outside the home often occurred within walking distance of where they lived. Parks and food-related retail stores became prime locations for physically distanced social interaction. These have disrupted routines of remote schooling, home-based activities, and virtual social networking.

Nearby amenities

our research Participants included Canadian youth aged 13 to 19 living in London, Ontario. We found that the availability of neighborhood amenities influenced positive or negative changes in mental health (interpreted as their own perceptions of mood and outlook on life) and stress levels during the first six months of the pandemic. We investigated how it contributed to

There are parks, restaurants, convenience stores, and other amenities near the house.

We want to know whether these amenities could have prevented poorer mental health and higher stress levels, and whether young people living in suburbs have different perceptions of mental health and stress levels than young people living in urban areas. I investigated whether.

The missing role of parks

Surprisingly, having a park near home had no significant effect on young people’s mental health or stress levels.This finding is contrary to Evidence that these places were important for supporting well-being In the midst of a pandemic.

Given the pre-pandemic challenges; Encourage young people to use local parksThese locations may not play a substantial role in supporting young people to improve their mental health or reduce their stress levels compared to other nearby facilities.

Youth experiences in urban neighborhoods

For young people living in urban areas, the increased availability of fast food restaurants near young people’s homes has reduced stress levels, but exacerbated poor mental health. When combined with A decline in eating habits was observed.Young people in urban areas were almost seven times more likely to report poor mental health.

Although location near a young person’s home can make a difference to young people’s mental health, we found that it had a greater impact on stress levels.

Food-based amenities in urban areas may have provided a place for young people to relieve stress and cope with declining mental health by eating fast food and convenience store snacks and socializing. .

Youth experiences in suburban areas

Youth in suburban areas were more likely to report changes (both improvement and decline) in mental health and stress levels. Also, compared to young people living in urban areas, there were more restaurants nearby. Specifically, having more convenience stores near home was associated with more dramatic changes in mental health and higher stress levels.

Additionally, among youth living in suburban areas, those who reported decreased levels of physical activity were nearly three times more likely to have poor mental health than those who reported no change in their physical activity levels since the pandemic. it was high.

Overall, boys were significantly less likely than girls to improve their mental health over the study period, and this was especially true for boys living in suburban areas.

One possible reason for this trend is that boys more likely to play organized sports Schools offer it more often as an extracurricular activity than for girls. Also, boys tend to have less of it. Extensive social network on digital platforms outside of school than girls.

Loss of physical activity at school and distance from face-to-face social networks can create feelings of isolation and loneliness in boys.

Role of neighborhood amenities

The first six months of the pandemic revealed the importance of neighborhood amenities in preventing declines in mental health and reducing stress levels.

While parks may have been a beneficial feature for other population groups, we found that they had a limited role for young people in terms of mental health and stress. Planners and landscape architects can reflect on how these places can be changed to be more attractive to young people, thereby ensuring that they receive the same benefits as younger and older groups. Masu.

Additionally, it is important to consider that the experiences of youth living in suburban and peri-urban areas may differ. This highlights the need to incorporate youth perspectives into the planning of public spaces that contribute to healthy and thriving communities.

The pandemic has exposed long-standing questions about how young people access community amenities and how their needs can best be met in Canadian communities.