The research exploring the association between the built environment and children's mental health and cognitive abilities has produced mixed results. This may be due to the inconsistency in the approach taken to describe the built environment. This study, using data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a large general-population birth cohort, considered simultaneously several measures to describe it when the participant child was 3 years old, including neighbourhood disorder (assessed by an MCS interviewer by direct observation of several physical and social aspects of the immediate neighbourhood), area green space, air pollution, urbanicity and neighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage. It then explored its role in the trajectory of mental health (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire-SDQ) and cognitive ability (measured with the British Ability Scales-BAS) across ages 3–11 years in 4454 children of stayer families in England. Using growth curve modelling we found that neighbourhood disorder was associated with emotional symptoms and conduct problems at age 3 and with the trajectory of cognitive ability from ages 3 to 11. These associations were robust to controls for quality of the indoor housing environment and parental mental health and socio-economic status. Neither green space nor air pollution had any effect on our outcomes. Our findings shed light on the importance of specific aspects of the built environment for mental health and cognition during childhood. They also highlight the value of using direct observation of the immediate neighbourhood.

探索建筑环境与儿童心理健康和认知能力之间关系的研究产生了不同的结果。这可能是由于描述建筑环境的方法不一致。这项研究使用来自千年队列研究 (MCS) 的数据，这是一个大型的普通人群出生队列，同时考虑了几种措施来描述参与者孩子 3 岁时的情况，包括邻里障碍（由 MCS 访问员通过直接观察评估近邻里的几个物理和社会方面）、区域绿地、空气污染、城市化和邻里社会经济劣势。然后，它探讨了其在英格兰 4454 名留守家庭的 3-11 岁儿童的心理健康轨迹（用优势和困难问卷-SDQ 测量）和认知能力（用英国能力量表-BAS 测量）中的作用。使用生长曲线模型，我们发现邻里障碍与 3 岁时的情绪症状和行为问题以及 3 至 11 岁的认知能力轨迹有关。这些关联对于室内住房环境质量和父母心理健康的控制是稳健的和社会经济地位。绿色空间和空气污染都没有对我们的结果产生任何影响。我们的研究结果揭示了建成环境的特定方面对儿童时期心理健康和认知的重要性。