Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
Publication date
March 29, 2023
Summary:
Objectives: Existing research highlights the beneficial nature of heritage engagement for mental health, but engagement varies geographically and socially, and few studies explore spatial exposure (ie, geographic availability) to heritage and heritage visits. Our research questions were ‘does spatial exposure to heritage vary by area income deprivation?’, ‘is spatial exposure to heritage linked to visiting heritage?’ and ‘is spatial exposure to heritage linked to mental health?’. Additionally, we explored whether local heritage is associated with mental health regardless of the presence of green space.
Design: Data were collected from January 2014 to June 2015 via the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) wave 5. Our study is cross-sectional.
Setting UKHLS data were either collected via face-to-face interview or online questionnaire.
Participants 30 431 adults (16+ years) (13 676 males, 16 755 females). Participants geocoded to Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘English Index of Multiple Deprivation’ 2015 income score.
Main exposures/outcome measures LSOA-level heritage exposure and green space exposure (ie, population and area densities); heritage site visit in the past year (outcome, binary: no, yes); mental distress (outcome, General Health Questionnaire-12, binary: less distressed 0–3, more distressed 4+).
Results: Heritage varied by deprivation, the most deprived areas (income quintile (Q)1: 1.8) had fewer sites per 1000 population than the least deprived (Q5: 11.1) (p<0.01). Compared with those with no LSOA-level heritage, those with heritage exposure were more likely to have visited a heritage site in the past year (OR: 1.12 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.22)) (p<0.01). Among those with heritage exposure, visitors to heritage had a lower predicted probability of distress (0.171 (95% CI 0.162 to 0.179)) than non-visitors (0.238 (95% CI 0.225 to 0.252)) (p<0.001).
Conclusions: Our research contributes to evidence for the well-being benefits of heritage and is highly relevant to the government’s levelling-up heritage strategy. Our findings can feed into schemes to tackle inequality in heritage exposure to improve both heritage engagement and mental health.
Published in
BMJ Open
Volume
Volume: 13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-066986
ISSN
20446055
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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