At the seminar, Kadri Leetmaa, Anto Aasa, and Jürgen Pikk from the Social-Spatial Context Research Group, and Kairi Kreegipuu from the Brain and Cognition Research Group will speak.

This presentation explores how the social and physical characteristics of people’s living environments shape their mental health and life satisfaction. Using mental health and contextual data from the Estonian Population Mental Health Study (2021–2022), we identify which environmental factors—ranging from neighbourhood social characteristics to green space availability—exert the strongest influence on wellbeing, and assess how these measured contextual indicators compare to individuals’ sociodemographic and psychological profiles in explaining mental health outcomes. We also compare the effects of perceived greenspace exposure with objectively measured greenspace metrics, showing that the two are not directly related and operate through different pathways in shaping wellbeing.