Significance Depression is the global leading cause of disability and related economic losses. Cities are associated with increased risk for depression, but how do depression risks change between cities? Here, we develop a mathematical theory for how the built urban environment influences depression risk and predict lower depression rates in larger cities. We demonstrate that this model fits empirical data across four large-scale datasets in US cities. If our model captures some of the underlying causal mechanisms, then these results suggest that depression within cities can be understood, in part, as a collective ecological phenomenon mediated by human social networks and their relationship to the urban built environment.

中文翻译：

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美国大城市地区抑郁症发病率较低的证据和理论


意义抑郁症是全球导致残疾和相关经济损失的主要原因。城市与抑郁症风险增加相关，但城市之间抑郁症风险如何变化？在这里，我们开发了一种数学理论，用于解释城市建筑环境如何影响抑郁症风险，并预测大城市较低的抑郁症发生率。我们证明该模型适合美国城市四个大型数据集的经验数据。如果我们的模型捕捉到了一些潜在的因果机制，那么这些结果表明，城市内的萧条可以部分理解为一种由人类社会网络及其与城市建筑环境的关系介导的集体生态现象。