Life course of place: a geographical approach to understanding mental health and cognitive ageing

Many studies show that individual circumstances throughout life influence subsequent health and well-being outcomes. The life-course perspective emphasizes that health is affected by the accumulation of social and economic (dis)advantages over an individual’s life but, importantly, also that there can be critical periods where the effects of exposure can be greater. Yet few researchers have applied a life-course perspective to the study of health and place, which has resulted in a partial understanding of the dynamics of person-health-place relations. This presentation will introduce a new longitudinal approach for incorporating aspects of place into a life-course framework. Using historical and contemporary environmental information alongside cohort data from a cohort of individuals born in 1936 (the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936), I will consider the influence of environmental factors over the life course on mental health outcomes and cognitive ageing later in life.Fundación BBVAN