الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Mental health disorders account for 7.4% of the burden of disease, and are now the leading cause of long-term disability worldwide. Nowadays, urban life style has raised the risk of anxiety and mood disorders by 21% and 39% respectively. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between a number of attributes of the urban built environment with mental health and how mental health can be improved through urban design. It is difficult to measure mental health, so depression has been chosen to indicate it as the most common form of mental illness and its prevalence is projected to increase (CDC, 2013) and it can be measured. Basically, mental health depends on human inner feelings and emotions reacting from the surrounding environments. The study is based on analyzing the individual experience of people and their life style in several neighborhoods of Damietta City, Egypt by using Hamilton Depression Scale as instrument to evaluate the severity of depressive symptoms. The attributes of the built environment in those neighborhoods are investigated using geographic information systems (GIS) that has been used on a sample of 445 individuals divided into 4 areas. The socio-economic characteristics factor is installed as well for each two areas and the results have been compared. The results of this research may anticipate specific guidelines for healthier urban design spaces. A relationship has been created between the attributes of the urban built environment and the severity of the depressive symptoms emphasizing on the possibility of building psychologically healthy cities.