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Project

Urbanization and mental diseases in Flanders

Urbanization causes more air pollution, less green space and higher temperatures during heat waves. These urbanization factors have been linked to more and more serious cardiovascular en respiratory diseases. However, regarding the association of this urbanisation with common mental disorders (depression, anxiety problems…) knowledge is limited up to date. What we do know is that mental disorders are common in Flanders, have a high impact on the well being of the population, are linked with high suicide numbers and go hand in hand with high use of antidepressant, anxiety and sleeping drugs.
In this project we will untangle the associations between urbanization and these common mental disorders and related drug use using a Flemish dataset. This dataset is the Intego database who collects since 2000 morbidity data, medication prescriptions and clinical parameters of a large sample of the Flemish population based on health records of general practioners.
Recently this database has expanded and now also contains environmental factors (like air pollution values, distance to road, environmental noise, distance to green space and temperature data). These environmental factors are estimated for every of the individual patients in Intego based on his/her exact home address. This new combined dataset allows us to learn a lot more on possible associations of urbanization on the prevalence and severity of common mental disorders and related drug use in Flanders.

Date:1 Jan 2020 →  31 Dec 2023
Keywords:Urbanization, mental diseases, Flanders
Disciplines:Primary health care, Environmental health and safety, Behavioural sciences