Researchers who conducted a large study of adults in Denmark, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community.
In fact, the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly greater than the risk of living in a poor neighborhood, said Clive Sabel, a professor at the University of Plymouth and the paper’s lead author.
“Even if you came from the most income-deprived communities, not moving — being a ‘stayer’ — was protective for your health,” said Dr. Sabel, a geographer who studies the effect of environment on disease.
“I’ll flip it around by saying, even if you come from a rich neighborhood, but you moved more than once, that your chances of depression were higher than if you hadn’t moved and come from the poorest quantile neighborhoods,” he added.
The study, a collaboration by Aarhus University, the University of Manchester and the University of Plymouth, included all Danes born between 1982 and 2003, more than a million people. Of those, 35,098, or around 2.3 percent, received diagnoses of depression from a psychiatric hospital.
As expected, adults who grew up in the poorer neighborhoods were more likely to suffer from depression, with increased risk of 2 percent for each drop in neighborhood income level.
More surprising was the increased risk for adults who moved more than once between the ages of 10 and 15: They were 61 percent more likely to suffer from depression in adulthood compared with counterparts who had not moved, even after controlling for a range of other individual-level factors, the researchers found.
The study did not try to find reasons for this association, but Dr. Sabel speculated that moving was disruptive to children’s social networks, requiring them to replace their friend groups, athletic teams and religious communities, all forms of what he calls “social capital.”
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Researchers who conducted a large study of adults in Denmark, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community.
In fact, the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly greater than the risk of living in a poor neighborhood, said Clive Sabel, a professor at the University of Plymouth and the paper’s lead author.
“Even if you came from the most income-deprived communities, not moving — being a ‘stayer’ — was protective for your health,” said Dr. Sabel, a geographer who studies the effect of environment on disease.
“I’ll flip it around by saying, even if you come from a rich neighborhood, but you moved more than once, that your chances of depression were higher than if you hadn’t moved and come from the poorest quantile neighborhoods,” he added.
The study, a collaboration by Aarhus University, the University of Manchester and the University of Plymouth, included all Danes born between 1982 and 2003, more than a million people. Of those, 35,098, or around 2.3 percent, received diagnoses of depression from a psychiatric hospital.
As expected, adults who grew up in the poorer neighborhoods were more likely to suffer from depression, with increased risk of 2 percent for each drop in neighborhood income level.
More surprising was the increased risk for adults who moved more than once between the ages of 10 and 15: They were 61 percent more likely to suffer from depression in adulthood compared with counterparts who had not moved, even after controlling for a range of other individual-level factors, the researchers found.
The study did not try to find reasons for this association, but Dr. Sabel speculated that moving was disruptive to children’s social networks, requiring them to replace their friend groups, athletic teams and religious communities, all forms of what he calls “social capital.”