Neighborhood social vulnerability and depression prevalence in the United States

Depression is a leading global mental health issue, and social determinants of health (SDOH) influence its onset and progression. The role of neighborhood-level social vulnerability index (SVI), a comprehensive measure encompassing multiple SDOH indicators, in depression prevalence remains uncertain. Utilizing data from the US CDC, we employed mixed-effects linear regression models to explore this association and applied LASSO regression to analyze the relative importance of SVI domains and indicators Our analysis revealed that neighborhoods with higher SVI exhibited a significantly higher prevalence of depression, with an adjusted beta of 2.625 (95% CI: 2.518, 2.724) for continuous SVI, and the prevalence increased progressively from the second to the fourth SVI quartile (p for trend <0.001) Among all domains, race & ethnicity status (β = -9.090) and socioeconomic status (β = 8.252) demonstrated the strongest associations with depression prevalence, and we also observed a significant interaction between environmental burden and SVI (p for interaction <0.001). These findings indicate that higher SVI is associated with higher depression prevalence, with racial & minority and socioeconomic statuses emerging as key drivers of this relationship.