ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1659023
This article is part of the Research TopicPublic Health Outcomes: The Role of Social Security Systems in Improving Residents' Health Welfare, Volume IIView all 22 articles
Growing pains: Exploring residents' mental health in a rapidly growing municipality - a qualitative study
Provisionally accepted
- Universitetet i Innlandet, Elverum, Norway
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Belonging to a community provides opportunities for engagement, social connectedness, and participation, which are important for mental health. Norwegian municipalities are responsible for safeguarding the mental health of their residents, but there are significant differences in the types of services they provide. Some municipalities are experiencing rapid growth, which may impact residents' mental health and the accessibility of tailored mental health services. The aim of this study is to explore how a municipality's rapid growth has affected residents' mental health from both professionals' and users' perspectives. Focus group interviews were carried out in two groups with fourteen participants from different professions and user organizations from one rapidly growing municipality. The focus group interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The analysis resulted in three categories: Preparedness for complex life challenges, Importance of having a social network, and Changed threshold for access to health services. This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article Health services are not sufficiently prepared to keep up with the complexity of challenges people are facing. No one is in charge, it is difficult to navigate the available services, and collaboration is not systematized. The threshold for getting mental health services has become higher.
Keywords: Mental Health, Municipality, Qualitative content analysis, Rapid growth, social capital
Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 14 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Akre and Granrud. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marie Dahlen Granrud, marie.granrud@inn.no
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