Thanks to the work of sociologists James Coleman, Robert Putnam and others, the contribution of “social capital” to a successful life is widely acknowledged. The term refers to the quality of a person’s social ties and networks. In recent years, clear associations have been found between poor social capital and poor mental health in adulthood. So how might this work for children?
UK social statistician Howard Meltzer from the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry explored the question in a survey of 3,340 11 to 16 year-olds living in 426 UK postal districts. Just reported in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, their study considered a particular aspect of social capital in relation to childhood psychopathology – children’s perceptions of the safety and trustworthiness of their home neighborhoods.
The researchers found that there was a particularly strong association between the occurrence of emotional disorders and how much children felt they could trust the people around them and how safe they felt walking the streets alone.
More importantly, the results showed that it is not the characteristics of a particular neighborhood – affluent or otherwise – that matter: true, children in hard-pressed communities felt the least safe, but in poor communities where there was good social capital the children were relatively healthy.
The odds of children experiencing an emotional disorder were 12 times greater in communities where they felt they could trust no-one. Controlling for individual, family and household risks that might explain poor mental health, and also for neighborhood prosperity, lengthened the odds, but poor social capital still left children nearly nine times more likely to experience an emotional disorder.
What the researchers cannot say, of course, is whether the absence of trust and a sense of safety lead to mental ill-health or whether emotional disorder induces a sense of insecurity. They therefore conclude with some hypotheses about the mechanisms involved.
Always looking over one's shoulder, actually or figuratively, as children feel compelled to do in the most risky environments, is known to produce anxiety and poor physical health, both of which are associated with poor mental health.
If this is true, economic regeneration by itself is unlikely to provide any cure for the woes of British childhood. Correcting their damaging perceptions by increasing trust, making neighborhoods safe to walk in alone and encouraging people to look out for each other are likely to be just as important.
References:
Meltzer H, Vostanis P, Goodman R and Ford T, “Children's Perceptions of Neighbourhood Trustworthiness and Safety and their Mental Health” Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, 48, 12, (2007), pp1208-1213
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