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Record W4413356179 · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0329141

Residential greenness and reduced depression during COVID-19: Longitudinal evidence from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

2025· article· en· W4413356179 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Paul J. Villeneuve, Susanna Abraham Cottagiri, Ying Jiang, Margaret de Groh, Esme Fuller‐Thomson

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS ONE · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicUrban Green Space and Health
Canadian institutionsPublic Health Agency of CanadaUniversity of TorontoCarleton UniversityQueen's University
FundersPublic Health AgencyPublic Health Agency of Canada
KeywordsDepression (economics)PandemicInterquartile rangeMedicineOddsLonelinessDemographyOdds ratioPopulationCohort studyMental healthEpidemiologyGerontologyLogistic regressionCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Environmental healthPsychiatryInternal medicineDisease

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Urban greenness has several demonstrated mental health benefits, including lower rates of depression and loneliness. Few studies have evaluated the possible benefits of greenness on depression during the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic. We investigated this topic using a prospective cohort of Canadian adults. METHODS: Our study population consisted of 13,130 participants, 50 years of age and older, of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Short Scale (CES-D-10) screening tool was used to determine whether individuals had depression at two-time points (pre-pandemic, and 6 months into the pandemic). Greenness was characterized using the maximum annual mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (500m buffer) from the pre-pandemic residential address. Logistic regression was used to estimate the odds of depression during the pandemic in relation to an interquartile range increase in the NDVI. RESULTS: The prevalence of depression increased nearly twofold between the pre-pandemic and pandemic surveys (8.5% to 16.5% for men; 14.4% to 27.1% for women). Irrespective of depression status before the pandemic, those with higher residential greenness had lower odds of depression during the pandemic. Among those 'not depressed' pre-pandemic, the odds ratio (OR) of depression during the pandemic in relation to an interquartile increase in the NDVI (0.06) was 0.91 (95% CI: 0.85-0.97), while a weaker association was found for those depressed pre-pandemic (OR=0.96; 95% CI: 0.83-1.11). The inverse association between greenness and depression during the pandemic was strongest among those of lower socioeconomic status. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that green spaces in urban areas helped mitigate against depression during the pandemic.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.006
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.061
Threshold uncertainty score0.122

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.006
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.003
Science and technology studies0.0020.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.113
GPT teacher head0.320
Teacher spread0.207 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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