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In a new study, researchers found that people who moved frequently during their childhood or early teenage years are more likely to suffer from depression as adults.
Published in journal JAMA Psychiatry, The new paper, published in Denmark and the UK, finds that frequent moves during childhood have a greater impact on mental health in adulthood than childhood poverty.
Examining more than one million records compiled for everyone born in Denmark between 1982 and 2003, the researchers found that about 35,000 people, or 2.3 percent, were diagnosed with depression as adults.
It might seem like a given that people who grow up in poor neighborhoods are more likely to suffer from depression as adults, but the researchers found that people who moved multiple times between the ages of 10 and 15 were a staggering 61 percent more likely to be depressed than those who didn’t move, even after controlling for other personal factors.
“Not migrating – being a ‘stayer’ – had protective health effects, even if you came from the lowest-income areas,” explained Clive Seibel, a geographer at the University of Plymouth in the UK and lead author of the study. Research interview The New York Times.
Sabel said research he conducted with colleagues at Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Manchester in the UK suggested a reversal of the same principle.
“Even if you come from an affluent area, if you’ve moved at least once, you’re more likely to be depressed than someone who hasn’t moved and comes from the poorest areas,” he explained.
Even more alarming, the study suggests that adults who moved from poor to wealthy areas as children also had a 13 percent higher risk of developing depression. By comparison, people who moved from wealthy to poor areas as children were about 18 percent more likely to develop depression as adults, the study said.
While the paper itself does not offer a hypothesis about its effect, Seibel did offer his own.
“It’s a vulnerable age, a really critical age, when kids have to stop and recalibrate,” the geographer said. The New York Times“We think our data shows something about early childhood disruption that we haven’t fully explored or understood.”
Still, Sabel argues that based on one big data point, the findings are clear.
“The literature is very clear that having a sense of stability in childhood, particularly in the early years, is really important,” he told the paper.
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