HAPPY PLACES: In December, Penn State University issued a press release discussing recent research that looked into links between community and mental health.

The press release indicates that environmental factors such as community type, commute time, the quality of social capital and poverty have on mental health.

“This is a real concern not just in the United States, but across the world,” one researcher, Stephan Goetz, was quoted as saying in the release. Goetz is a professor of agricultural economics and regional economics at Penn State and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.

Goetz goes on to say, “Poor mental health can result in considerable economic costs, including losses of dollars to lower productivity and this doesn’t even include the staggering personal costs of negative mental health and depression.”

Researchers have found the time period people spend in negative moods can range on average from half a day per month for people with the best mental health to 8.3 days per month for people with poor mental health.

Residents of rural communities and inner cities were not as happy as people in suburban communities, according to Goetz.

“People who live in the suburbs are closer to jobs and all of the amenities that a big city can provide, but they’re also far enough away from the stress of the inner city,” he said. “It may be that you don’t want to be too close to people, but you don’t want to be too far away either.”

There were a couple of other factors that suggested whether residents of an area would be more or less happy.

Longer commute times correlated with a greater amount of poor mental health days, a finding which was true no matter if the person lived in a rural area, suburb or inner city. Also, people who lived in more supportive communities were happier and dealt with problems better.

Regarding the impact of economic status on mental health, researchers concluded it would be more useful to focus on lessening the number of poverty-stricken people in a community rather than on increasing economic equality.

“As economists we talk a lot about financial costs, but often don’t consider the high personal costs that are incurred in some of these communities, including those associated with drug abuse and crime,” Goetz stated.