Medical School, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 1;18(3):1312. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18031312.
Drought is thought to impact upon the mental health of agricultural communities, but studies of this relationship have reported inconsistent results. A source of inconsistency could be the aggregation of data by a single spatiotemporal unit of analysis, which induces the modifiable areal and temporal unit problems. To investigate this, mental health-related emergency department (MHED) presentations among residents of the Wheat Belt region of Western Australia, between 2002 and 2017, were examined. Average daily rainfall was used as a measure of drought. Associations between MHED presentations and rainfall were estimated based on various spatial aggregations of underlying data, at multiple temporal windows. Wide variation amongst results was observed. Despite this, two key features were found: Associations between MHED presentations and rainfall were generally positive when rainfall was measured in summer months (rate ratios up to 1.05 per 0.5 mm of daily rainfall) and generally negative when rainfall was measured in winter months (rate ratios as low as 0.96 per 0.5 mm of daily rainfall). These results demonstrate that the association between drought and mental health is quantifiable; however, the effect size is small and varies depending on the spatial and temporal arrangement of the underlying data. To improve understanding of this association, more studies should be undertaken with longer time spans and examining specific mental health outcomes, using a wide variety of spatiotemporal units.
干旱被认为会影响农业社区的心理健康，但对这种关系的研究结果报告并不一致。不一致的一个原因可能是单一时空分析单位对数据的聚合，这会导致可修改的面积和时间单位问题。为了研究这一点，研究了 2002 年至 2017 年间西澳大利亚州小麦带地区居民与心理健康相关的急诊就诊情况。平均日降雨量被用作干旱的衡量标准。根据基础数据的各种空间聚合，在多个时间窗口，估计了 MHED 就诊次数与降雨量之间的关联。结果观察到广泛的差异。尽管如此，还是发现了两个关键特征：当夏季测量降雨量时，MHED 就诊次数与降雨量之间的关联通常呈正相关（每 0.5 毫米日降雨量增加 0.05 时，比率比高达 1.05），而当冬季测量降雨量时，关联通常呈负相关（每 0.5 毫米日降雨量降低 0.05 时，比率比低至 0.96）。这些结果表明，干旱和心理健康之间的关联是可量化的；然而，效应大小很小，并且取决于基础数据的时空排列。为了更好地理解这种关联，应该进行更多具有更长时间跨度的研究，并使用各种时空单位来检查特定的心理健康结果。
