After watchin the movie Gridiron Gang the other night I found myself fearing things like the chance of a gun man in the mall. When a person starts thinking about these kinds of things they sometimes start to consume my thoughts. I started thinking about our campus and the safety of it. I'm very thankful to go to a college the gives me a great sense of safety. I started to think about small towns. I grew up in one and found myself not worrying if I walked across town and not witnessing or ever hearing about crime in my small town hardly ever growing up. It makes me wonder if because of the fear of crime people in bigger cities would be more psychologically unstable when it came to fearing crime and what kind of impact this would have on depression rates in small towns and big cities. I also thought this article was neat because of the correlation between fearing crime and people's mental health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070927164455.htm
I also wanted to look deeper into researching the presence of depression in the law system. I found shocking information relating to depression and lawyers. According to a study at Johns Hopkins, that when 28 occupations were studied, the one most likely to experience depression was the occupation of lawyer. Why is this? For one, it appears that the legal profession attracts people who are perfectionists. There also seems to be a large amount of pessimistic personality traits in people who are lawyers. Of another study at Johns Hopkins it showed that optimism out performed pessimism. However, there was one exception and that was people working in law school.
I am taking the class Psych of Personality. I wouldn't say that Psych of Law and that class are very compatible. However, personality does have a large effect on what professions people choose. This is something that affects the types of people who do indeed become lawyers. Psychology reaches so many different aspects of life, and this is clearly an example of that.
http://www.legalunderground.com/2005/03/lawyer_depressi.html
If a person is accustomed to the level of crime in an area, I don't think they would be depressed. I grew up in Davenport, and while it's not a very big city, it has more problems than the typical town. I was used to not being able to leave my bike outside overnight or avoiding certain parts of town. It wasn't anything that stressed me out or made me depressed. I adapted to my surroundings.
When I was in junior high school, my family moved to a smaller town nearby and I was surprised at the small, but noticeable differences. I could go anywhere in town and feel comfortable. I could leave my bike outside overnight or leave my car unlocked without having to worry.
So, I think this is more of an individual issue. Someone in a small town could fear crime just as much or more than a person living in an unsafe area depending on personality and any issues in their mental health.
This website shows, that people in larger cities fear crime more than those in smaller cities:
http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/PUB/C49.htm#geography
However, like most things I think that there are exceptions and is mostly dependent on personality of the individual person.