Pierse Nevil, Carter Kristie, Bierre Sarah, Law David, Howden-Chapman Philippa
Department of Public Health, University of Otago (Wellington), Wellington, New Zealand.
Department of Public Health, University of Otago (Wellington), Wellington, New Zealand Treasury, New Zealand Government, Wellington, New Zealand.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2016 Oct;70(10):961-6. doi: 10.1136/jech-2015-206716. Epub 2016 May 6.
The association between good mental health and housing circumstances is well established. Tenure, household crowding and housing affordability have all been linked to mental health and psychological distress. These cross-sectional relationships are collinear and confounded, and so provide little information on the possible effects of changing housing circumstance on mental health or psychological distress. To do this longitudinal data are needed.
In this paper we use the longitudinal data from the 11 500 NZ households in the Survey of Families, Income and Employment (SoFIE), conducted in New Zealand from 2002 to 2010. We examine the cross-sectional associations of housing factors on psychological distress and use fixed-effects modelling of longitudinal data to examine any effects of changes in selected housing factors on changes in psychological distress.
We show large significant cross-sectional associations between all the housing circumstances and psychological distress. These associations were not present in the fixed-effects models. Only changes in individual deprivation had a significant effect on changes in psychological distress. While a significant effect was found for moves to and from houses with a two-bedroom deficit, the small number of moves of this type means these results are not robust.
These results show that the effect of house ownership and housing affordability on psychological distress is likely to be confounded in the cross-sectional models. Therefore, marginal changes to these housing factors are unlikely to yield large reductions in psychological distress. Our results suggest that reductions in psychological distress are more likely to be seen through interventions that target individual socioeconomic deprivation and severe household crowding.
良好的心理健康与住房状况之间的关联已得到充分证实。住房 tenure、家庭拥挤程度和住房可承受性均与心理健康和心理困扰相关。这些横断面关系相互共线且相互混淆，因此几乎无法提供有关住房状况变化对心理健康或心理困扰可能产生的影响的信息。要做到这一点，需要纵向数据。
在本文中，我们使用了 2002 年至 2010 年在新西兰进行的家庭、收入和就业调查（SoFIE）中 11500 个新西兰家庭的纵向数据。我们研究了住房因素与心理困扰之间的横断面关联，并使用纵向数据的固定效应模型来研究选定住房因素的变化对心理困扰变化的任何影响。
我们发现所有住房状况与心理困扰之间存在显著的横断面关联。这些关联在固定效应模型中并不存在。只有个人贫困状况的变化对心理困扰的变化有显著影响。虽然发现搬入和搬出有两居室短缺的房屋有显著影响，但这种类型的搬迁数量较少，这意味着这些结果并不稳健。
这些结果表明，在横断面模型中，房屋所有权和住房可承受性对心理困扰的影响可能被混淆。因此，这些住房因素的边际变化不太可能大幅降低心理困扰。我们的结果表明，通过针对个人社会经济贫困和严重家庭拥挤的干预措施，更有可能降低心理困扰。
