title: The Designed Environment and How it Affects Brain Morphology and Mental Health.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The environment is inextricably related to mental health. Recent research replicates findings of a significant, linear correlation between a childhood exposure to the urban environment and psychosis. Related studies also correlate the urban environment and aberrant brain morphologies. These findings challenge common beliefs that the mind and brain remain neutral in the face of worldly experience.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  There is a signature within these neurological findings that suggests that specific features of design cause and trigger mental illness. The objective in this article is to work backward from the molecular dynamics to identify features of the designed environment that may either trigger mental illness or protect against it.
  
  
  METHODS
  This review analyzes the discrete functions putatively assigned to the affected brain areas and a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which is the primary target of most antipsychotic medications. The intention is to establish what the correlations mean in functional terms, and more specifically, how this relates to the phenomenology of urban experience. In doing so, environmental mental illness risk factors are identified.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Having established these relationships, the review makes practical recommendations for those in public health who wish to use the environment itself as a tool to improve the mental health of a community through design.
authors.affiliation: Queensland University of Technology, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland, Australia Green Man Architecture Design P/L, New South Wales, Australia Schizophrenia Research Institute, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia jan.golembiewski@qut.edu.au.
authors.forename: Jan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Golembiewski
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D004298:Dopamine / Q000378:metabolism; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000209:etiology; D008603:Mental Health; D012307:Risk Factors; D014505:Urban Population
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine
keywords: amygdala; architecture; behavioral health; caudal cingulate; dopamine; epidemiology; health care; nature; neuroscience; psychiatric conditions; psychosis; public health; risk factors; urban environment