A good part of the global burden of disease can be attributed to environmental factors, such as noise. With a high prevalence of mental health problems in lower socioeconomic groups it is important to understand how environmental exposures contribute to mental health. The focus of my research is on children as children are more vulnerable to the effects of environmental exposures, their bodies and mind are in rapid development and coping mechanisms need yet to be discovered or further developed. In this presentation I will show two approaches to explore the interaction between the physical and social environment, using noise as a physical exposure.  The first approach is an assessment of noise exposure using activity-patterns to create more detailed exposure information. The hypothesis in this first approach is that lower socioeconomic groups experience higher noise exposure both at home and through visiting higher exposure areas in their leisure time. The second approach focusses on the effects of noise on cognitive functioning and mental well-being using the concept of learned helplessness.  The hypothesis is that chronic noise exposure and social stressors alter your ability to cope with noise during a task or influence your motivation to persist at a difficult task. Your ability to cope is related to your perception of control, which is in turn influenced by your social environment. Feelings of not being in control because of continually failed coping mechanisms followed by not trying to cope with the incoming stressors anymore (giving up) describe learned helplessness.

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