Sze Hang Fu

A person’s mental well-being can be influenced by both individual and neighbourhood characteristics. While many studies of mental health determinants focused on the mainstream population, few studies focused on immigrants. This study seeks to find out the individual and neighbourhood characteristics that caused depression for the Canadian-born and foreign-born populations in the Toronto CMA. It employs a mixed method approach by combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. Multi-level logistic regression revealed that sense of belonging to the local community was an important variable for both Canadian-born and foreign-born populations. Built environment characteristics appear to have no significant impact on the Canadian bornpopulation. For the foreign-born population, high traffic volume in the neighbourhood as represented by road length and living in duplex/low-rise apartment had a higher likelihood of depression. Moreover, the focus groups explored the mental health experiences among the Chinese immigrants in Toronto, thereby clarifying and validating the logistic regression results.