FREE ESSAY ON URBANISM AND CHILD MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL REVIEW

URBANISM AND CHILD MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL REVIEW

How much of an effect does your environment have on your mental health? Plenty. Does it
mean you're doomed if your environment is supposedly negative? Not necessarily. What can
we attribute the high rate of social and psychological problems in cities to? And, are
urban areas predestined to be a hub for high social and psychological problems. The
latter two are questions David Quinton is attempting to answer in the annotation titled 
Urbanism and Child Mental Health . In this commentary, Quinton reviews other researchers'
data and attempts to explain the phenomena. The research primarily includes subjects from
London's boroughs, as well as, urban areas from Oslo, Beijing and Kampala. Quinton notes
a similar review by Freeman (1984) is in circulation, but it failed to consider the
process of city rise and decay, the qualities of urban life and the impacts of the
physical environment. 
Quinton begins by commenting that there are few studies of early childhood disorders that
compare children in urban and rural areas within the same culture using the same
assessment measures. Instead, studies rely on ecological correlations in bureaucratically
limited areas. This data produced an unsurprising casual connection between indicators
such as housing features and deviance. However, the ecological fallacy - the inclination
to draw conclusions from unrelated indicators - presents problems. Therefore, data
related to area differences is deemed tainted because of certain influences. He reviewed
Lavik's 1977 study of disorder rates in Oslo with a rural sample, and surprise, behavior
problems were more common in the city. Basically, Quinton found the urban areas to have
higher instances of negative actions in all the studies he reviewed. He reviewed studies
based on the following sub-topics: Intra-urban differences, migration, features of the
area, housing characteristics, urban environment, urban malaise and social isolation and
support. The author feels that it's very difficult to  compile data on the processes of
producing the combinations of poor environments, low resources and personal
vulnerabilities that generate pathogenic family environments . The difficulty lies in the
fact that the research encompasses so much and crosses discipline boundaries. A
developmental study that includes factors like; the characteristics of migrating parents,
the benefits and temptations of urban areas, social overload versus social isolation and
urban malaise, is not feasible unless someone wants to spend a lot money for a question
everyone claims to know the answer to. Quinton believes the answer to the research lies
in two approaches he calls  life history and life events research . He thinks the history
perspective is necessary to understand how families come to be in particular
environments. He also believes  the life events approach provides a means of linking life
histories and current environments to the circumstances precipitating disorder, and thus
perhaps to measures that might alleviate difficulties . 
I was mislead by the title of the article. I expected an article complete with
interviews, statistics and personal highlights similar to an NBC Dateline program. At
first, one is inclined to think Quinton is digging too deep in the subject, but in
retrospect I believe he's going in the right direction. Quinton's research lets
developmental studiers know the depth of the research needed to properly assess the urban
situation. We all believe that there is some truth in the statement ' kids in the inner
city have greater chance at experiencing social and psychological problems'. However,
it's difficult to come up with a study that includes all of the factors necessary to
properly determine the answer. Common sense tells me that a study of this magnitude is
impossible, because so many elements are included in the growth of a person's
personality. Nevertheless if such a study were completed, the results wouldn't startle
anyone. It's true inhabitants of the concrete jungle will always have a higher percentage
of social and psychological problems. The justification for this assumption lies within
my personal experiences. I've lived in Illinois, New Jersey and several cities in Europe,
and it's about the same everywhere you go. Human nature is based upon basic needs,
environment and learned behaviors. The key here is environment. Although the proximity to
educational and social stimulus is near excellent, so are items promoting deviant
behavior. One would assume, because of the vast amount of people available to them,
persons born and bred in the within the inner city would have access to broader based
thoughts. I believe that's the way it used to be, but now certain people I know
personally have narrow ways of thinking. The financial status of a human being plays a
major role in the development of an individual. It'll determine where a person lives, who
they'll interact with and what type of opportunities they'll have available to them.
Unfortunately, for urban area kids, a strong possibility exists that they'll never know
about many of the opportunities. For those who do, some will choose to ignore them.