The Power of Place: LAS Researcher Examines How Environments Shape Teen Mental Health
Using GPS‑linked data, Dr. Amanda Roy’s research at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences uncovers how teens’ real‑world exposures influence mood, well‑being, and daily experiences across Chicago.
Name: Amanda Roy
Title: Associate Professor
Department: Psychology, Community and Applied Developmental Psychology program
Interview with Dr. Roy
Dr. Amanda Roy’s fascination with how environments shape human experience began far from Chicago—in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Rural, isolated, and often overlooked, the U.P. was a place Roy loved, but one that also stirred a desire to see more of the world. After graduating high school, she left for Madison to study psychology and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, where she discovered a passion for psychological research and its potential to explain how people think, feel, and behave.
Still, something felt missing. While Roy was drawn to research, much of her academic training felt disconnected from the social issues she cared most about. Wanting to work directly with people and communities, she joined the Peace Corps after college. For two and a half years, Roy lived in a small village in Cameroon, West Africa, working in community development and health education—a formative experience that reshaped her understanding of place, identity, and inequality.
“In Cameroon, I became acutely aware of my whiteness, my Americanness, and my privilege,” Roy recalls. “I didn’t just feel it, I saw how it shaped how people perceived me and interacted with me.”
That awareness deepened when Roy later moved to New York City, where she spent more than a decade earning her Ph.D. in Community Psychology at New York University and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in Developmental Psychology. For the first time, she was living in a dense urban environment, one where racial, economic, and social boundaries were often visibly mapped onto physical space.
“I was struck by how clearly different spaces signaled who belonged and who didn’t,” she says.
These experiences converged into a research agenda centered on environment, development, and health. Roy’s dissertation examined how neighborhood racial and ethnic composition related to adult health and well-being, revealing the complex ways that race, class, violence, and access to resources intersect spatially to shape individual outcomes. But she wanted to push further—particularly for young people.
Shortly after joining UIC’s Department of Psychology in 2014, Roy launched a study designed to rethink how researchers measure environmental exposure. Traditionally, neighborhood studies rely on fixed geographic boundaries, such as census tracts. But those boundaries, Roy argues, don’t reflect how people—especially teens—actually move through the world.
To capture real-life experiences, Roy recruited 50 Chicago youth ages 15 to 17 and asked them to carry GPS-enabled phones for one week during the summer of 2016. The phones continuously recorded their locations, while participants completed brief mood, activity, and social interaction surveys three times a day. Roy’s team then linked those GPS data points to environmental indicators such as violent crime, abandoned buildings, and alcohol and tobacco retailers.
The results were striking. Youth exposure to negative environmental characteristics was significantly higher when measured using GPS data than when calculated using traditional residential boundaries. Just as important, teens reported worse moods when they were in environments with more negative features than they typically encountered.
“In other words,” Roy explains, “youth felt worse when they were in spaces that were more stressful or threatening than what they were used to.”
At the same time, the findings revealed a subtle but important nuance: young people often adapt to the environments they experience regularly, developing strategies to navigate them safely. That insight has meaningful implications for parents, educators, and community leaders working to support youth mental health in urban settings.
Now in her twelfth year at UIC, Roy continues to build on this work while expanding her focus to include how young adults understand social inequality and their place within it—particularly as they make decisions about college and careers.
“I believe that a college degree, communal care, and a life well-lived can all be forms of sociopolitical resistance,” she says.
For Roy, UIC is the ideal place to pursue that mission. She describes herself as continually inspired by her students and deeply committed to supporting their academic and personal goals.
“My experiences across rural, global, and urban settings taught me that place is never neutral,” Roy says. “Where we grow up and where we move through the world shape how we see ourselves, how we feel, and what we imagine is possible.”
At UIC, she’s helping ensure that research doesn’t just document those realities but also helps change them.