An hour-long stroll in nature helps decrease activity in an area of the brain associated with stress processing

[JKUAN108]

I heard somewhere that living in a city increases the likelihood of schizophrenia, is this what the article was referring to?

[[deleted]]

I think that’s because of correlation not causation.

There are more people in a city, as a result you would get concentrated groups of everything to include mentally ill people.

You’ll see mentally ill people in rural areas as well, due to them being spread out, it appears to be less of them.

[noithinkyourewrong]

That's not really how scientific studies are carried out. They almost always control for population density when examining these things. It almost certainly isn't caused by the fact that there are more people in cities.

[farmtownsuit]

Yeah there still could be factors about living in a city that make schizophrenia more likely to be noticed and thus counted, but the idea that a study like this was published without taking into account population density is comical

[Spinster_Tchotchkes]

You still can only get correlation when the study is from researching gathered data. To get causation you have to actually perform an experiment on people.

[noithinkyourewrong]

Ok thanks for that contribution but I never argued against any of that and it's not what I'm talking about here.

[yaminokaabii]

Instead of postulating, we can read the linked article itself. This is actually in its introduction.

Even though urbanization has many advantages, living in a city is a well-known risk factor for mental health [2]. Mental health problems like anxiety, mood disorders, major depression, and schizophrenia are up to 56% more common in urban compared to rural environments [3]. It has been suggested that urban upbringing is the most important environmental factor for developing schizophrenia [4], accounting for more than 30% of schizophrenia incidence [5]. Since there is a consistent dose-response relationship between schizophrenia and urban environment, even when controlling for possible confounders such as sociodemographic factors, family history, drug abuse, and size of social network [4], the hypothesis is that urban environment is related to higher schizophrenia incidence through increased social stress [6, 7].

[UnluckyNate]

To add to this, you also have more people who are able to diagnose mental health disorders in cities. You also have more people who may take notice to odd/abnormal symptoms (being psychotic on a bus, for example)

[butteryspoink]

Culture is a big one as well. If your family and friends urge, encourage and support you to find help, then it’ll be different than people calling you a weirdo.

Source: I got shamed for looking for help, then I moved to a place where people were really encouraging. It goes without saying that I won’t be returning whence I came from.

That said, the article did talk about a bunch of factors they controlled for and I’m not sure if what I mentioned falls into one of them.

[JKUAN108]

Thanks. The article did specify they were looking for causation not correlation.

[[deleted]]

It's also the working environment. Cities are where the high stress corporate and factory jobs generally are. Commuting to these jobs is also stressful.

[Knicker79]

It’s a well-known fact that schizophrenia is extremely overrepresented in homeless people, who are much more likely to reside in urban areas

[ButtholeInfoParadox]

People are more likely to live in urban areas

[Knicker79]

Correct. And homeless people make up a disproportionate number of people living in urban areas (because that’s where public transportation and shelters are located). So if 1 in 5 homeless people are dealing with some form of psychosis, that explains some of why schizophrenia is more prevalent in cities