depression

New Study – Big Cities Cause Higher Risk of Mental Disorders: Do you think you have a high stress/anxiety level reaction? Might be because of where you grew up. Did you awaken to the beep, beep, beep of large trucks backing up in the early morning hours when you were young? Or did you wake up to the crow of a rooster in the morning, stretch lazily and then slowly climb out of bed to go milk the cows?

Growing up in a large metropolitan area could possibly affect your mental health, according to a study conducted in Germany and published in Nature on Wednesday, June 22, 2011.

Research studies in the past have indicated a higher risk of schizophrenia for those who live in large cities. This new study indicates that growing up in urban areas such as the Washington, D.C., area, New York, Houston, Paris, or London might lead to mental health problems down the road, such as mood and anxiety disorders. The city and rural volunteers for the study were healthy, and the conclusion of the study was a little mixed.

Yes, living in a high-stress environment does cause anxiety levels to be heightened, but this study focused on how the brain responds to stress or anxiety caused by the negative words of other people.

In conducting the tests, the researchers scanned the brains of the participants in the study while asking them to solve mathematic equations. The perception of the participants in the study was that the questions were going to be easily answered. This was not the case. The questions were not simple, and the responses of many of the participants were incorrect.

While the brain scans were being conducted and the questions were asked, the participants were given criticizing statements regarding their incorrect responses, such as the participants’ answers were “surprisingly bad” and “disappointing,” and were led to believe or think that they might not be knowledgeable enough to participate in the study.

The study began with 32 volunteers; a mix of city and urban participants, and the brain scan checked two areas of the brain: the amygdala, and also the areas that control the circuitry of the amygdala. The amygdala is the area of the brain that processes memory of emotional reactions and is part of the limbic system. The amygdala turns on the juices of reactions – dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine.

With the verbal negative feedback that the participants received, the results indicated that those participants who grew up in metropolitan areas, cities with populations of more than 100,000, reacted more severely to the words of criticism than the participants who resided in less populous areas of less than 10,000 (rural).

In order to determine where the participants grew up, the researchers asked the question of how many years they had spent by age 15 in a city, town or rural area. Using this baseline, the result was that the more length of time spent in an urban (metropolitan) or large city area during those first 15 years, the higher the response was to the negative information given to the participants. Those who had spent their first 15 years in more rural areas had less of a response to the negative information fed to them while undergoing the brain scan.

So, if you grew up in a large city, you might find your anxiety level much higher under pressure than those who grew up on a farm. More testing will likely be conducted over the years to determine exactly how this latest study will impact the psychiatric field.