Mental Health Crisis: The Pandemic’s Growing Impact
A surprising new study shows most people’s mental health has been pretty good during the coronavirus pandemic.
The report, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, analyzed 137 studies from around the world and found that, overall, people’s mental health did not change significantly before and after the worst coronavirus pandemic.
“The mental health impact of COVID-19 is more accurate than describing it as ‘tsunami’ or other similar terms used by some researchers and in many media articles,” the researchers wrote.
“Instead of a mental health crisis, there was a high level of resilience at the population level,” they said.
The researchers looked at studies conducted between 2018 and 2019, before China first reported the first coronavirus outbreak to the World Health Organization, and compared those results with studies conducted on the same populations in 2020 or later.
They found that most changes in mental health symptoms, including symptoms of depression and anxiety, “were close to zero and were not statistically significant.”
The study found that “Among studies in the general population, we found no change in general mental health or anxiety symptoms, and there was minimal worsening of depressive symptoms.”
The vast majority of the studies analyzed were conducted in wealthier countries.
However, some groups of people experience deterioration in mental health.
The report says that women’s mental health is deteriorating, albeit in small amounts. The study also found that the same applies to older people, university students and those who belong to sexual minorities or gender groups.
“There is concern about the significant worsening of symptoms among women in the population,” the study says, adding that women are disproportionately represented in healthcare, where they hold the vast majority of jobs in the home and care for the elderly.
Source: Daily Mail