High Eviction Rates May Impact Black Mothers’ Mental Health

Ohio State University COLUMBUS, Ohio — Living in a neighborhood with high eviction rates over time is associated with higher rates of psychological distress among pregnant Black women compared to those who live in areas with lower eviction rates, a new study has found. The research highlights the impact of the housing crisis on pregnant women, even on those who haven’t personally been evicted, and the importance of neighborhood conditions to Black maternal health, said lead author Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson, associate professor of epidemiology at The Ohio State University College of Public Health. “Black mothers are at least three times more likely than white mothers to die during or in the year after pregnancy, and we are not talking enough about the neighborhoods that people are living in as a predictor of poor maternal mental health,” Sealy-Jefferson said. She and her colleagues examined trajectories of neighborhood evictions over time, and odds of moderate and serious psychological distress among more than 800 Metro-Detroit Black women during pregnancy. Higher rates of eviction filings and judgments in a woman’s neighborhood before and during pregnancy were associated with two-fold to four-fold higher odds of psychological distress. The study appears today in the American Journal of...