Short communicationDoes heightened fear of crime lead to poorer mental health in new suburbs, or vice versa?
Section snippets
Background
Crime and fear of crime are intertwined with health. Studies identify somewhat consistent associations between higher levels of fear of crime and poorer general health (Ross, 1993, Chandola, 2001), mental health (Whitley and Prince, 2005, Green et al., 2002, Roberts et al, 2012), physical functioning and quality of life (Stafford, 2007). However, the theoretical pathways that link fear of crime and health, and the direction of this relationship, are not well understood (Lorenc et al., 2012).
Study context
The RESIDential Environments (RESIDE) Project is a longitudinal study of people building houses and relocating to 73 new housing developments, spread across 48 suburbs in Perth, Western Australia. All people building homes in the study areas were invited to participate by the state water authority following the land transfer transaction (response rate 33.4%). Participants completed a self-report questionnaire before they moved into their home (n = 1813), and on three occasions after relocation
Results
There were few differences between participants who completed both the baseline and follow-up surveys and those who completed baseline only (Table 1), indicating that participant attrition was not selective. The mean values for the key variables were stable across the time-points, with participants on average reporting they were between ‘a little’ and ‘somewhat’ fearful (i.e., mean fear of crime scores at baseline and follow-up = 2.6) and were unlikely to have a mental illness (i.e., mean K6
Discussion
For this sample of suburban residents, we found longitudinal evidence of a positive association between fear of crime and psychological distress, and a positive association between psychological distress and fear of crime. To elucidate the direction of the causal pathway, we ran temporal order models to test whether, for example, fear of crime at an earlier time-point was independently associated with psychological distress at a later time-point, adjusted for psychological distress at the
Conclusion
This study addresses the lack of empirical evidence on the causal relationship between fear of crime and health, and contributes to the debate on the direction of the relationship and mechanisms linking fear and health. Longitudinal models revealed a bi-directional association between fear of crime and mental health, where each impacts on the other, but temporal models suggested a single causal pathway, with psychological distress leading to heightened fear of crime. Engagement with the local
Acknowledgements
RESIDE was funded by grants from the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) (#11828), the Australian Research Council (ARC) (#LP0455453) and supported by a National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Capacity Building Grant (#458688). SF is supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (#DE160100140), PH by a NHMRC CRE in Healthy Liveable Communities postdoctoral fellowship (#1061404), and BGC by a NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship (#1004900).
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