“You thrive where you are:” Experiences of neighborhood built environments, mental health and wellbeing among residents of disinvested neighborhoods

AbstractBuilt environment research has consistently linked green space to mental health, yet much of this literature relies on top-down, quantitative measures of green space, with limited attention to how residents of disinvested communities characterize their environments and how those interpretations impact their mental health and wellbeing. Participatory, spatially grounded approaches remain underutilized in examining how neighborhood environments shape resident wellbeing. This pilot study aimed to understand how residents of the Monongahela Valley in Pennsylvania perceived their neighborhood environments as impacting their mental health and wellbeing. In Spring (2022), we worked with community organizations to recruit participants residing in the area. Consenting participants completed a baseline survey and then documented features of their neighborhood built environment with geotags, photos, and narrative using ESRI's Survey123 app over a two-week period (N = 20). A subset of participants (N = 9) completed a geographically explicit, semi-structured, in-depth interview wherein they viewed and discussed maps of their own geotags and photos. Interviewers asked participants to define mental health and utilized the maps to elicit rich description of neighborhood features and participant perspectives on how they supported or detracted from mental health and wellbeing. We found that participants often related their mental health and wellbeing, as well as their hopes for the future, to features of their residential built environments, and that asking them to document features of their environments that were directly meaningful to them allowed them to clearly articulate possibilities for what their neighborhoods could be, along with identifying current deficits.