Abstract :

Nowadays, populations around the world are suffering from mental health issues, especially depression, and the number is estimated to increase every year. Not only depression issues but also air pollution that is surging. Air pollution has been shown to affect people’s respiratory systems and may even have an impact on mental health, leading to various diseases, for instance depression and Alzheimer’s disease. These disorders tend to occur in people of all age groups and in all countries and regions. Interestingly, each area has different air qualities, which raises concern of its impact on mental health. To investigate this issue, a cross-sectional survey was performed focusing on teenagers aged 12-18 in three different provinces in Thailand to compare the effect of air quality on mental health. This survey used a questionnaire consisting of 34 questions to collect data from 629 individuals participating in this research. The data analysis was performed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) program. Our results display the mean score of mental health and air quality as 2.62 and 3.02, respectively, which states that there is an average rate of these 2 variables. Furthermore, the one-way ANOVA test comparing mental health levels in 3 residents shows no significant difference (p-value = 0.225), however, one-way ANOVA comparing the air quality shows a significant difference between the 3 provinces (p-value less than 0.001). We also conducted a t-test to compare the 2 variables between pupils who have underlying medical conditions and pupils who don’t have them. Unfortunately, we found no significant difference for mental health in pupils with and without medical conditions (p-value = 0.75) and for air quality in pupils with and without medical conditions (p-value = 0.52). Nevertheless, the correlation analysis obtained an r-value of 0.30, which indicates that the survey produced a weak positive correlation between mental health and air quality. This type of study is rarely conducted in Thailand, which means there will need to be more studies in this field. Regarding this research, it is apparent that air quality has an effect on mental health, so an open mind of caring for ourselves and others about this issue would be practical.

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Keywords :

Air pollution, Air Quality, Depression, Medical Conditions, Mental Health

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