New research suggests that eviction from a home can have multiple negative consequences for families - including depression, poorer health and higher levels of stress.

Researchers at Rice University and Harvard University found that eviction often results in multiple and multidimensional negative consequences for urban mothers. Mothers who were evicted the previous year experienced about 20 percent higher levels of material hardship and parenting stress.

"The year following eviction is incredibly trying for low-income mothers," Rachel Kimbro, an associate professor of sociology at Rice, associate director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's Urban Health Program and the study's co-author, said in a statement. "Eviction spares neither their material, physical nor mental well-being, thereby undermining efforts of social programs designed to help them."

The study, which is the first to examine the consequences of eviction from housing in a nationally representative dataset, focused on low-income, urban mothers -- a population at high risk of eviction.

According to the study, one in two mothers who experienced eviction reported depression, compared with one in four similar mothers who did not experience eviction; and one in five mothers who experienced eviction reported their child's health as poor, compared with one in 10 mothers who did not experience eviction.

Kimbro said that the hardship might lead to additional problems, such as relationship dissolution or moving into a disadvantaged neighborhood.

"Moreover, because the evictions we observed in our sample occurred at a crucial developmental phase in children's lives, we expect them to have a significant impact on children's well-being," she said.

Study co-author Matthew Desmond said that this could affect the mothers' relationships with their romantic partners and children, kin and neighbors; could cause them to withdraw from social institutions, which dampens their civic engagement and level of community embeddedness; and could sap their energy and prevent them from seeking or keeping gainful employment or participating fully in their children's development.

The findings are detailed in the journal Social Forces.