Image: GONI MONTES
In Brief
Hidden Costs of City Living
- Metropolitan populations are significantly more likely than rural ones to suffer from mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia.
- Among urban dwellers, social stress leads to hyperactivity in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex, brain regions that play an important role in equilibrating our emotions.
- The pressures of city life can change brain physiology, thereby increasing the risk of emotional disorders.
Our protagonist moves to the big city, seeking a better life. It's a classic—and increasingly common—tale. More than half the world's population now lives in a metropolis, and by 2050 that figure will very likely jump to two thirds. China's megacities in particular are fueling the trend, with more than 10 million new residents every year. Historically, urbanization has brought about stupendous changes—the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, globalization. Yet this urban migration represents one of the most dramatic environmental shifts human beings have ever undertaken. So one might be tempted to ask: How are we adapting to our new digs?
At first glance, trading green fields for gray grids would seem to be a trade up. City slickers have, on average, more money, better food and greater access to health care than country folk. On the flip side, though, recent studies indicate that memory and attention can suffer in urban environments, and psychologists have long known that city life takes an emotional toll. Urbanites are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, and the risk of schizophrenia increases dramatically among people raised in a city. Some researchers have calculated that children born in cities face twice, if not three times, the risk of developing a serious emotional disorder as compared with their rural and suburban peers.
This article was originally published with the title Big City Blues.
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25 Comments
Add CommentWe're finding good evidence for a correlation between IQ and depression, and we've long had excellent evidence that people who live in cities have a significantly higher IQ. Has this experiment imposed controls for IQ and education (another correlate of both depression and urbanism)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOdd..I encountered WAY MORE people with mental disorders when working in rural areas. So many 'locked in' rural social settings are dysfunctional and anyone with an issue is typecast, marginalized, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that many may be effected by the change to urban life but for many more, it's a liberation from over-structured limitations on thought and expression.
lump...re IQ and urbanization. True. Who leaves 'home' to make a better life for themselves?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think back to my small home town...the cream of the crop 'went away' leaving Bubba to tend the cows. I'm sur eit's no different in China, India, etc.
It's those capable of taking care of themselves, the educated, etc. who tend to leave home. Genetic selection doesn't stop with modernization.
I also have to wonder whether this study controlled for the varying availability of mental health care services, cost of care in relation to income and even frequency of interpersonal contact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople who do not frequently come in contact with others are far less likely to suffer consequences as a result of any mental disorders. Likewise, those suffering from disorders may avoid contact with others, seeking rural isolation.
On the other hand, how many high income urban professionals regularly seek psychiatric counseling? Is this apparent association just a stereotype?
I suspect the percentage of farm workers, for example who seek mental health services is much lower than high income urban dwellers, but testing representative urban and rural population groups for mental disorders might produce conflicting evidence!
In Hardscrabble, yes, and murder too, by the way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy guess is that the major US media will be silent on research that might discourage tens of millions to move back to dense urban areas from outlying suburbs - absolutely needed to reduce TMV traveled, by the way, to prevent global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of the causes for increase rate of mental illness in urban cities might include the air pollution or noise pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am wondering if this research took into account the fact that is stated in the article that urban dwellers have better access to health care. From that fact I am guessing that most people in rural settings especially those who are low income do not have the time, money, or insurance coverage to be able to go to a counseling. I know that in some places it is almost an hour drive to just a regular doctor office, many people can not dedicate a 2 hour round trip to see a psychiatrist. Also many rural careers/jobs do not offer insurance, and access to public funded programs is limited to welfare type programs, which usually only cover families with children. So from my experience I would say that the percent affected is close, but in rural settings most go without treatment or even being diagnosed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould it be that the more you know and / or interact with others the more you tend to be psychopathic / sociopathic? I see a trend in television programming for producers to explain / explore the minds of very bright people who are more or less psychopathic / sociopathic ... with many devoted followers. It is hard (but not too hard) to know that impression is real, and if real, to fathom the content producers' motives, but I think whatever is happening is happening on purpose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am always amazed that when pop-lit reports a study, dozens of comments fall into the "I wonder if they adjusted (considered) X?". And another category falls under the "My experience contradicts (or supports) this."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first types should go to the source paper(s) and see if the effects were accounted for (often they are).
The second types should take a stats course so they can learn the value of samples of size 1 (the plural of anecdote is not data).
As to this finding, as a rural person I am not surprised that people in crowded cities are more prone to stress-like diseases. I feel stress when I have to go to the city (ooops, n=1). But I do remember Calhoun's work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink) and the resulting dogma about overcrowding.
Then there's the expert commentators who have nothing to say about the subject of the article, only remarks about other commentators.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMO, that there are question about the study not answered by the new report indicates that the news report did not adequately represent the study. While commentators who are sufficiently interested may pursue their own research to resolve open questions, but the onus is on the author of the report to properly research and report.
In this case of the overworked "Preview" (teaser) article, its intent is to interest the reader sufficiently to cause him/her to buy the complete report. I don't know why you should be questioning the commentators' discussions.
As a person who grew up in small towns nowhere near a city in the 1950's, more significant than the migration from rural to urban areas (continuing incorporation of farm lands and automation of agricultural production reduce rural labor opportunities) is the enormous global increase in population.
Since 1950 the population of the Earth has nearly tripled, from 2.5 to 7 billion people. Even the U.S. population has more than doubled in that time. Moreover, the world population is expected to increase by 2 billion over the next 30 years - an increase greater than the total population of the Earth at any time in its history prior to 1927.
With increasing automation reducing rural labor requirements, it should not be surprising that rural populations would tend to migrate to cities in hopes of finding gainful employment.
As long as these factors continue to produce dramatically increasing population densities, it is imperative that mental health researchers address the inherent consequences. I'm just continually amazed that the principal cause - overpopulation - continues to be nearly completely ignored. Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
http://www.census.gov/population/international/index.html
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php
J.R. Flynn believes a rise in IQ test scores (3 points per decade, generally speaking) has been due to generational differences (differences in what an earlier generation knew and found relevant compared to a later generation). Suppose some of the mental health issues commented today are not so much inter-generational as presently territorial and cultural. In that case, increasing IQ might not be the only measure of a Flynn effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving grown up in the 1950s, when TV first became widely available - followed by computers and the internet, one of the critical recent 'generational differences' has been the increasing globalization of shared, high speed electronic information and communication. These factors are likely to contribute significantly to improving IQ scores - much more than past differences between rural and urban education and information availability.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"These factors are likely to contribute significantly to improving IQ scores - much more than past differences between rural and urban education and information availability."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, but I'm not talking only about IQ scores; I'm also talking about these so-called "mental health issues" that now seem more acute in cities than in rural areas. I see a growing tendency of people (those who watch TV) to be attracted to dramas related to serial killers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and oddball characters more astute than the average bear. It reminds me of a training ground. Whatever this thing is, it's obviously societal / cultural and our content producers are playing to it with lots of fanfare.
OK - I'm arguing that the influence of some unidentified or generic "generational differences" is trivial in comparison to the specific changes in now globalized information technology over the past few decades - as well as the enormous changes in population over the past, especially ~100 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think these two factors are directly responsible for producing what are seen as 'societal/cultural' changes. BTW, I absolutely abhor first-person killer video games, for example, but at this point we don't know whether compulsive playing of such games might be helping young people to cope with the extraordinary stresses of modern life.
I think the Japanese, have lived for many years in very stressful conditions of very high population densities would be very interesting subjects for studies of personal adaptive strategies...
I don't think the conditions causing increased stress among U.S. and other cultures will be improving any time, as long as the population continues to increase. Just wait 'til the affects of resource depletion really hit. We may not have to wait for the next generation...
Some facts or factoids about urban living and emotional disorders: Urban living is much more complex than country living, it can be considered an stressor in itself, and thus its features may uncover a hidden unbalance that otherwise won't have been noticed. Rural or country environments are much more tolerant about mental health impairment than urban ones, I've seen in a village a man that everyday came to the local church to receive "Communications from the saints", nobody cared about this. Another anecdote: an schyzophrenic reported having repeatedly heard a voice urging him to kill his closest friend. The insane finally killed his acquaintance, and then, the voice's content changed to: "What have you done?" The killer's response was: "I've done what you told me to do, bastard!".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"OK - I'm arguing that the influence of some unidentified or generic "generational differences" is trivial in comparison to the specific changes in now globalized information technology over the past few decades - as well as the enormous changes in population over the past, especially ~100 years."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe the Flynn effect as a possible effect of "urban living and (related) emotional disorders":
John Horgan (Get Smart, Take a Test, November, 1995): Flynn also looks askance at the idea that the growing pervasiveness of the media, and television in particular, has made children smarter. Television was usually considered a “dumbing down” influence, Flynn comments wryly, “until this effect came along.” Moreover, scores began rising in the U.S. decades before the advent of television in the early 1950s.
Flynn looked beyond video games and television for the causation of secular gains in IQ. He attributed the gains to generational differences in what people knew and paid attention to. "Dogs and rabbits" was his shorthand abstraction of that idea.
This from Flynn's "Are We Getting Smarter?" (2012)
When similarities asks “What do dogs and rabbits have in common?” the correct answer is that they are both mammals, rather than that we use dogs to hunt rabbits. The correct answer assumes you are conditioned to look at the world in a certain way: through scientific spectacles – as something to be understood by classification; and not through utilitarian spectacles – as something to be manipulated to advantage.
Ravens is all about using logic to deal with sequences of abstract shapes that have no counterpart in reality. If a mind is habituated to taking hypothetical problems seriously, and using logic to deal with the hypothetical, this seems perfectly natural. If you are unaccustomed to using logic for anything but to deal with the concrete world, and indeed distrust reasoning that is not grounded in the concrtete, you are amenable to the change of gears that Ravens requires.
The next step toward understanding is rather like an archeological excavation. Dig into the past hoping to find evidence that appears relevant and assemble it bit by bit. Fortunately, Luria recorded interviews with isolated rural people (Russians in the 1920s) who still lived in pre-scientific cognitive environments. Here is an interview about classification: fish and crows.
Here is an interview about classification: fish and crows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQ: What do a fish and a crow have in common?
A: A fish – it lives in water. A crow flies. If the fish just lies on top of the water, the crow could peck at it. A crow can eat a fish, but a fish can't eat a crow.
Q: Could you use one word for them both?
A: If you call them “animals,” that wouldn't be right. A fish isn't an animal and a crow isn't either. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can't eat a bird. A person can eat a fish, but not a crow.
Note that even after an abstract term is suggested, the “correct” answer is still alien.
Also from James R. Flynn (Are We Getting Smarter? 2012): Appendix V: "Wonderful paper on causes of Raven’s gains."
The "Wonderful paper" was:
Mark C. Fox and Ainsley Mitchum, (A KNOWLEDGE-BASED THEORY OF RISING SCORES, 2012): Secular gains in intelligence test scores have perplexed researchers since they were documented by Flynn (1984, 1987). Gains are most pronounced on abstract, so-called culture-free tests, prompting Flynn (2007) to attribute them to problem solving skills availed by scientifically advanced cultures. We propose that recent-born individuals have adopted an approach to analogy that enables them to infer higher-level relations requiring roles that are not intrinsic to the objects that constitute initial representations of items. This proposal is translated into item-specific predictions about differences between cohorts in pass rates and item-response patterns on the Raven’s Matrices, a seemingly culture-free test that registers the largest Flynn effect. Consistent with predictions, archival data reveal that individuals born around 1940 are less able to map objects at higher levels of relational abstraction than individuals born around 1990.
Regardless of veracity, the biological hypotheses described above rest on a conceptual metaphor of the Flynn effect as an increase in some psychological quantity that is already possessed in greater or lesser amounts by every person in every population. Contrary to this interpretation, recent findings suggest the trend is better conceptualized as reflecting a know-how approach to problem solving, a form of knowledge that proliferates only in relatively modern cultures.
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So what about that?
Cities are "relatively modern cultures". Urban environments can be cognitively challenging, to say the least. What is the distribution of reactions to the cognitive complexities of urban environments? Might some reactions seem to be manifest as "anxiety" and "depression", and "serious emotional disorder as compared with their rural and suburban peers"? And what about the reactions of individuals that take the cognitive complexities of urban life in stride?
One can make arrangements for one's physical security.But one can not save oneself psychologically. People living in cities easily come under the illusion that by addition to securities or ideas, they will become psychologically secure, completely comfortable.This security is sleep for the mind and the natural friction required to operate the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.amazon.com/Existence-Friction-Y-V-Chawla/dp/1483912175/
One can make arrangements for one's physical security.But one can not save oneself psychologically. People living in cities easily come under the illusion that by addition to securities or ideas, they will become psychologically secure, completely comfortable.This security is sleep for the mind and vitiates the natural friction required to operate the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.amazon.com/Existence-Friction-Y-V-Chawla/dp/1483912175/
"So what about that?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, now I definitely say, "Fish & Crows" - utterly convincing!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFair enough, I'll try again.
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"OK - I'm arguing that the influence of some unidentified or generic "generational differences" is trivial in comparison to the specific changes in now globalized information technology over the past few decades - as well as the enormous changes in population over the past, especially ~100 years."
"I think these two factors are directly responsible for producing what are seen as 'societal/cultural' changes."
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How could those "specific changes in now globalized information technology over the past few decades" not be part and parcel of "generational differences" in the past 100 years?
John Horgan (Get Smart, Take a Test, Scientific American, November, 1995):
"Flynn also looks askance at the idea that the growing pervasiveness of the media, and television in particular, has made children smarter. Television was usually considered a “dumbing down” influence, Flynn comments wryly, “until this effect came along.” Moreover, scores began rising in the U.S. decades before the advent of television in the early 1950s."
Today, Flynn compliments Fox and Mitchum for their 2012 research paper "A Knowledge-based Theory of Rising Scores".
Fox and Mitchum:
"Unlike others who have investigated matrix reasoning, we do not attribute our findings to individual differences in working memory, but instead note that our proposal is compatible with Carpenter et al.’s (1990) well-known findings precisely because their FAIRAVEN and BETTERAVEN models differ only in productions (procedural knowledge)."
"Regardless of veracity, the biological hypotheses described above rest on a conceptual metaphor of the Flynn effect as an increase in some psychological quantity that is already possessed in greater or lesser amounts by every person in every population."
"Contrary to this interpretation, recent findings suggest the trend is better conceptualized as reflecting a know-how approach to problem solving, a form of knowledge that proliferates only in relatively modern cultures."
What are the bases of video games and Internet surfing but procedural knowledge? Flynn seems to have changed his mind.
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"BTW, I absolutely abhor first-person killer video games, for example, but at this point we don't know whether compulsive playing of such games might be helping young people to cope with the extraordinary stresses of modern life."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya7IhijXYUQ
Thanks. OK, I concede too - even population changes can be considered generic 'generational changes'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat video is really scary! I can see hoards of trained chimpanzee shock-troops invading, Tokyo? It'd make a great sci-fi movie!
I saw a story on TV once about how the U.S.S.R. had supposedly experimented with genetically modified ape-men to produce a super-trooper. That's a little too far-fetched for me, but then I'm an old fogy <%)
Wait, there's more, a point to be made...about chimps and humans and generational / differences. A lot of stuff to string together. Bear with me through tomorrow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't worry, mama nature is coming around with a poly-pandemic to put it all back the way it ought to be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the suggestion by a commentator that violent TV or games has anything to do with pretty much anything at all; those cultures with the most violent entertainment tend to have the lowest violent crime rates. I'm particularly squeamish and won't hunt or fish because the gore makes me sick but I love first person shooters.