Mental health

Damp housing has been repeatedly shown to worsen the mental health of those who endure it. It has been primarily linked to anxiety and depression.

For those with preexisting mental health conditions, damp housing can worsen these. Notably, in 2018 mental health charity Mind found that four in five people with mental health probems have lived in housing that ‘made their mental health worse or caused a mental health problem.’ The same survey highlighted damp and mould as key problems.

The impact dampness has on its cohabitants also highlights the inherent interelatedness of physical and mental health symptoms. In my survey, many respondents reported anxiety relating to health problems linked to their housing that they or those they lived with were experience. This anxiety seemed particularly sharp for those living with children. Even for individuals without existing physical health issues, multiple respondents and interviewees reported anxiety around the possibility their housing was impacting the health of themselves or others. In this sense, it seems physical health is a central object around which meantal ill-health manifests in relation to housing. This relationship is revealed as reciprocal when considering the negative impact worsening mental health can have on physical health outcomes. Indeed, I am also wary even here of deliniating such a binary between the two.

Because experiences of damp housing, and poor housing conditions more broadly, are inextricably tied to someone’s class position, it is unsuprising that the mental health impacts of it are often related to financial stress.