A network analysis of housing quality indicators and depression in women
Open accessAbstract
Numerous studies have detected associations between poor housing quality and increased risk for mental illness. However, it currently remains unclear in associations between poor housing quality and increased risk for women’s mental illness which housing quality indicators drive this association and hence which specific indicators should be prioritised in housing quality assessments or improvements. In a sample of up to 9,669 pregnant women, we used a network analysis to investigate cross-sectional associations between poor housing quality indicators (e.g., house size, facilities, leaks or condensation/mould, decorations, and feelings towards the home) and depressive symptoms (assessed at age 28). All 36 edges showed non-zero associations, whereby when considering all poor housing quality indicators ‘feelings-towards-the-home’ had the strongest association with depressive symptoms, and ‘feelings-towards-the-home’, in turn, was most strongly associated with house problems, size, and facilities. Our findings highlight the importance of using multiple (or composite) person-centred measures of housing quality in the context of maternal mental health.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Associations between poor housing quality, depressive symptoms, and epigenetic variation support interaction between chronic psychosocial stress, inflammatory signaling, and molecular stress regulation.
“Associations between poor housing quality, depressive symptoms, and epigenetic variation further support interaction between chronic psychosocial stress, inflammatory signaling, and molecular stress regulation (78).”
From Epigenetic changes associated with multi-generational trauma: characterization, mechanisms, and therapeutics (2026) · cites this paper as [78]
The Abstract and Discussion report associations between housing-quality indicators and depressive symptoms in women. The paper does not report epigenetic variation or examine inflammatory signaling or molecular stress regulation; its References list a separate study on DNA methylation, but that does not establish the proposed interaction. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredChronic housing instability reflects sustained environmental stress associated with prolonged activation of stress-responsive physiological systems.
“Chronic housing instability reflects sustained environmental stress associated with prolonged activation of stress-responsive physiological systems.”
From Epigenetic changes associated with multi-generational trauma: characterization, mechanisms, and therapeutics (2026) · cites this paper as [78]
The Introduction (page unavailable) links poor housing conditions and housing crises to mental-health outcomes, but does not discuss sustained environmental stress or prolonged activation of physiological systems. Searches for stress-responsive physiology and allostatic load found no passage in the paper’s text supporting that mechanism. (LLM, conf=0.72)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 22 · Cited by 1
Research works printed but not linked: 22
- [1]Evans, G. W., Wells, N. M., Chan, H. Y. & Saltzman, H. Housing quality and mental health. J. Consult Clin. Psychol. 68, 526–530 (2000). 10883571 · DOI
- [2]Rollings, K. A., Wells, N. M., Evans, G. W., Bednarz, A. & Yang, Y. Housing and neighborhood physical quality: children’s mental health and motivation. J. Environ. Psychol. 50, 17–23 (2017). · DOI
- [3]Sanders, F. et al. Home and Epigenome: DNA Methylation as a Link Between Poor Housing Quality and Depressive Symptoms. Preprint at (2024). 10.1101/2024.10.21.24315867 · DOI
- [4]Singh, A., Daniel, L., Baker, E. & Bentley, R. Housing disadvantage and poor mental health: A systematic review. Am. J. Prev. Med. 57, 262–272 (2019). 31326010 · DOI
- [5]Suglia, S. F., Duarte, C. S. & Sandel, M. T. Housing Quality, housing Instability, and maternal mental health. J. Urban Health. 88, 1105–1116 (2011). 21647798 PMC3232414 · DOI
- [6]Marcal, K. Timing of housing crises: impacts on maternal depression. Soc. Work Ment Health. 16, 266–283 (2018). 30245596 PMC6145813 · DOI
- [7]Pevalin, D. J., Reeves, A., Baker, E. & Bentley, R. The impact of persistent poor housing conditions on mental health: A longitudinal population-based study. Prev. Med. 105, 304–310 (2017). 28963007 · DOI
- [8]Aro, S. & Hänninen, V. Life events or life processes as determinants of mental strain? A 5-year follow-up study. Soc. Sci. Med. 18, 1037–1044 (1984). 6463671 · DOI
- [9]Fowler, P. J., Henry, D. B. & Marcal, K. E. Family and housing instability: longitudinal impact on adolescent emotional and behavioral well-being. Soc. Sci. Res. 53, 364–374 (2015). 26188460 PMC6088377 · DOI
- [10]Sadowski, H. S., Ugarte, B., Kolvin, I., Kaplan, C. E. & Barnes, J. Early life family disadvantages and major depression in adulthood. Br. J. Psychiatry. 174, 112–120 (1999). 10211164 · DOI
- [11]Blair, C. et al. Allostasis and allostatic load in the context of poverty in early childhood. Dev. Psychopathol. 23, 845–857 (2011). 21756436 PMC4167021 · DOI
- [12]Kingsbury, A. M., Plotnikova, M., Clavarino, A., Mamun, A. & Najman, J. M. Social adversity in pregnancy and trajectories of women’s depressive symptoms: A longitudinal study. Women Birth. 31, 52–58 (2018). 28711396 · DOI
- [13]Borsboom, D. et al. Network analysis of multivariate data in psychological science. Nat. Rev. Methods Primer. 1, 1–18 (2021). · DOI · Paper page
- [15]Foye, C. The relationship between size of living space and subjective Well-Being. J. Happiness Stud. 18, 427–461 (2017). · DOI
- [16]Penninx, B. W. J. H., Lamers, F. & Milaneschi, Y. S.03.02 - Clinical heterogeneity in major depressive disorder. Eur. Neuropsychopharmacol. 28, S59–S60 (2018). · DOI
- [17]Boyd, A. et al. Cohort profile: the ‘Children of the 90s’—the index offspring of the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children. Int. J. Epidemiol. 42, 111–127 (2013). 22507743 PMC3600618 · DOI · Paper page
- [18]Fraser, A. et al. Cohort profile: the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children: ALSPAC mothers cohort. Int. J. Epidemiol. 42, 97–110 (2013). 22507742 PMC3600619 · DOI · Paper page
- [19]Major-Smith, D. et al. The Avon longitudinal study of parents and children (ALSPAC): a 2022 update on the enrolled sample of mothers and the associated baseline data. Wellcome Open. Res. 7, 283 (2023). 37664415 PMC10472060 · DOI
- [20]van Buuren, S. & Groothuis-Oudshoorn, K. Mice: multivariate imputation by chained equations in R. J. Stat. Softw. 45, 1–67 (2011). · DOI · Paper page
- [21]Crown, S. & Crisp, A. H. A short clinical diagnostic Self-rating scale for psychoneurotic patients: the Middlesex hospital questionnaire (M.H.Q). Br. J. Psychiatry. 112, 917–923 (1966). 5970912 · DOI
- [22]Epskamp, S., Cramer, A. O. J., Waldorp, L. J., Schmittmann, V. D. & Borsboom, D. Qgraph: network visualizations of relationships in psychometric data. J. Stat. Softw. 48, 1–18 (2012). · DOI
- [23]Wysocki, A. C. & Rhemtulla, M. On penalty parameter selection for estimating network models. Multivar. Behav. Res. 56, 288–302 (2021). 31672065 · DOI
- Authors
- Sanders, F., Waldren, L. H., Baltramonaityte, V., Lussier, A. A., & Walton, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Bath (GB)
- Broad Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Walton, Esther
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2025-11-05
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 38745-38745
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC12589598
- OpenAlex
- W4415923564
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1
- FWCI
- 0.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (EP/S023364/1)
- Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2023-268)
- European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (848158)
- UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe / ERC Frontier Research Guarantee (EP/Y015037/1)
- MQ Fellows Award from the MQ Foundation (MQF22\9)
- National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (R01MH113930)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Homelessness and Social Issues
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- housing quality, depressive symptoms, women's mental health, maternal mental health, pregnancy, house size, housing facilities, housing quality indicators, network analysis
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cross-Sectional Studies, Depression, Female, Housing, Humans, Mental Health, Pregnancy
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
