ArticleSocial psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology2020
Do financial hardship and social support mediate the effect of unaffordable housing on mental health?
Article in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Association of Social Support and Loneliness with Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Housing affordability and psychological distress: Household measures mirror individual estimates but miss one in three at-risk adults.Preventive medicine reports · 2026Article
- The mediating role of financial well-being in the relationship between housing affordability and mental health.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Association between higher mortgage payment-to-income ratio and greater psychological distress among high-income homeowners in Japan: A cross-sectional study.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Mediation Effect of Dental Caries in the Relationship between Parental Locus of Control and Oral Health-Related Quality of Life.Caries research · 2025Article
- Generational differences in mental health trends in the twenty-first century.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Low assets predict persistent depression through living difficulties amid large-scale disasters: A cohort study.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeUnaffordable housing has a negative impact on mental health; however, little is known about the causal pathways through which it transmits this effect. We examine the role of financial hardship and social support as mediators of this relationship.
methodsWe identified households where housing costs changed from affordable to unaffordable across two waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey (2014-2015). The sequential causal mediation analysis was used to decompose the total effect of unaffordable housing on mental health into the portion attributable to financial hardship and social support [natural indirect effect (NIE)] and the portion not occurring through measured pathways [natural direct effect (NDE)]. Mental health was measured using the Mental Health Inventory (MHI) and Kessler psychological distress (KPD) scale. Baseline covariates included age, sex, household income, financial hardship, social support, marital status and employment status. Bootstrapping with 1000 replications was used to calculate 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Multiple imputations using chained equations were applied to account for missing data.
resultsUnaffordable housing led to a change in mean mental health score on the MHI scale (- 1.3, 95% CI: - 2.1, - 0.6) and KPDS scale (0.9, 95% CI: 0.4, 1.4). Financial hardship accounted for 54% of the total effect on MHI scale and 53% on KPD scale. Collectively, financial hardship and social support explained 68% of the total effect on MHI scale and 67% on KPD scale, respectively.
conclusionsIn conclusion, the negative mental health effect of unaffordable housing is largely mediated through increased financial hardship.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31520129What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.