Abstract
This paper examines gender differences in travel behaviour by people with mental health conditions based on the results of an on-line survey. Responses from 363 people have been weighted by figures from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2014 to make them representative of the population with mental illness in England. The evidence from the surveys presented in this paper shows that more women than men have panic attacks, but that more men than women have communication difficulties. More women than men are prevented by their mental health condition from leaving home, using bus, rail and metro and from buying rail tickets in advance. Significantly more women than men suffered from the following anxieties when travelling: the need for support, wayfinding, interacting with fellow travellers and concerns about the failure of the bus, train or car. For women, the greatest need seems to be policies and actions that will increase their confidence when travelling such as access to staff when assistance is required and clear information when travelling, plus the opportunity to receive travel training. More men than women wanted improvements to the travelling environment, such as less clutter on the street. Summing up, implementing improvements to increase confidence when travelling could help to reduce gender inequalities.
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The only other survey that could have been used to weight the responses was the Health Survey for England. That survey is carried out annually but some topics such as mental health are only included occasionally. The last time that mental health was included was 2014. In that survey, the respondents were shown a list of 17 different mental health conditions and asked to say which of these they had ever experienced (Bridges 2015). This means that people who had recovered from mental illness would be included. Older people are more likely than younger people to have had mental illness during their lifetime simply because they have lived longer. In contrast, APMS considered the current state of the mental health of the participants and so is closer to the question asked in the survey being considered in this paper which was ‘Do you have any of the following mental health conditions:’ followed by a list for them to tick as many as were relevant.
It may seem curious that the difference between the numbers of males and females in the overall anxiety of ‘Interacting with fellow travellers’ is statistically significant while the differences for the three factors that constitute this overall factor are not. 36% of the male respondents cited all three sub-reasons, whereas only 4% of the female respondents did so, meaning that more females cited one or two sub-reasons, which, partly at least, explains why there is a significant difference for the overall reason.
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The author would like to acknowledge the contribution to this work of all the people who took part in the survey by completing the questionnaire and the assistance of the eighteen organizations and three individuals who distributed the link to the questionnaire through social media, websites and newsletters or provided contact details for others to do so. He would like to acknowledge the advice on the statistical aspects of this work provided by Dr Chak Hei (Hugo) Lo of the Department of Statistical Science and Professor Helena Titheridge of the Centre for Transport Studies, both at University College London.
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Apart from the distribution of the link to the questionnaire and the completion of the questionnaires by the respondents, and the advice received on statistical analysis, the author was solely responsible for all aspects of this work including study conception and design, data analysis and interpretation of results, and manuscript preparation.
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Mackett, R.L. Gender, mental health and travel. Transportation 49, 1891–1920 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10231-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10231-2