September 2023
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Background Residential mobility, or moving to a different city, can negatively affect mental health through stress and disrupted social networks. Emerging literature, however, indicates the potential benefits of residential mobility through increased motivation to develop social ties. Therefore, this study examined how residential mobility affects psychopathology, cognition, and social cognition in a transdiagnostic sample of patients and healthy controls (HC). Methods Demographics, residential status, symptom severity, and cognitive and social cognitive performance data were collected from a larger parent study. Participants were coded into the relocation (n=400; 353 patients, 47 HC) or the non-relocation (n=140; 131 patients, 9 HC) group based on if their current address matched their town of birth. Relocation distance was also calculated between the participant’s birth city and current address. Results Independent sample t-tests revealed that the relocated group had fewer positive and general symptoms, and scored better on cognitive tasks assessing memory and verbal fluency and social cognition tasks assessing mentalizing ability than the non-relocated group. Correlational analyses yielded similar findings, in that relocation distance was positively correlated with delayed recognition. Conclusions Contrary to existing literature, current findings demonstrate that higher residential mobility may actually be associated with lower psychiatric symptoms and better cognitive and social cognitive functioning