Mental Health, Deprivation, and the Neighborhood Environment: What Is the Impact of Loneliness and Social Anxiety?

Mental Health, Deprivation, and the Neighborhood Social Environment: A Rejoinder to Eres, Harrington, and Lim (2020)

“…In their letter to the editor, Eres, Harrington, and Lim (2020; this issue, pp. 176–177) commented on our recent article (McElroy et al, 2019), in which we used network psychometrics to explore potential links between specific mental health symptoms and unique aspects of the neighborhood social environment.…”

“…First, Eres and colleagues (2020) claimed that we included only structural indicators of social cohesion (e.g., “Lives alone”) without including functional social indicators (e.g., meaningful relationships). We disagree that our study was entirely absent of functional indicators.…”

“…The second issue raised by Eres and colleagues (2020) was the lack of items capturing social anxiety. They argued that such symptoms may play a key role in linking social cohesion with other mental health problems.…”