What has changed in the experiences of people with mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic: a coproduced, qualitative interview study
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Abstract
Purpose
We sought to understand how the experiences of people in the UK with pre-existing mental health conditions had developed during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
In September–October 2020, we interviewed adults with mental health conditions pre-dating the pandemic, whom we had previously interviewed 3 months earlier. Participants had been recruited through online advertising and voluntary sector community organisations. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted by telephone or video-conference by researchers with lived experience of mental health difficulties, and, following principles of thematic analysis, were analysed to explore changes over time in people’s experience of the pandemic.
Results
We interviewed 44 people, achieving diversity of demographic characteristics (73% female, 54% White British, aged 18–75) and a range of mental health conditions and service use among our sample. Three overarching themes were derived from interviews. The first theme “spectrum of adaptation” describes how participants reacted to reduced access to formal and informal support through personal coping responses or seeking new sources of help, with varying degrees of success. The second theme describes “accumulating pressures” from pandemic-related anxieties and sustained disruption to social contact and support, and to mental health treatment. The third theme “feeling overlooked” reflects participants’ feeling of people with mental health conditions being ignored during the pandemic by policy-makers at all levels, which was compounded for people from ethnic minority communities or with physical health problems.
Conclusion
In line with previous research, our study highlights the need to support marginalised groups who are at risk of increased inequalities, and to maintain crucial mental and physical healthcare and social care for people with existing mental health conditions, notwithstanding challenges of the pandemic.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.12.21261913: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Consent: Participants were recruited to that study between 7th May and 8th July 2020, and as part of the informed consent process they were asked if they would like to take part in a second interview.
IRB: Ethical approval for a study focusing on loneliness and mental health problems was originally obtained from the UCL Research Ethics Committee on 19/12/2019 (ref: 15249/001).Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.12.21261913: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Consent: Participants were recruited to that study between 7th May and 8th July 2020, and as part of the informed consent process they were asked if they would like to take part in a second interview.
IRB: Ethical approval for a study focusing on loneliness and mental health problems was originally obtained from the UCL Research Ethics Committee on 19/12/2019 (ref: 15249/001).Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Strengths and limitations: By following up participants from our earlier interview study [12] we addressed a gap in the literature providing an in-depth longitudinal exploration of the impact of the pandemic beyond the first UK lockdown on people with pre-existing mental health conditions. Our work provided critical detail and depth to complement the findings of longitudinal national surveys, gaining a rich understanding of the specific issues affecting people with mental health problems. The purposive sampling we used for our original interview sample achieved a diverse participant sample, and the uptake of follow-up interviews was high (44/49; 90%). The experiences of people in a range of ethnic groups were thus well represented. This is important due to the unequal mental health impacts of the pandemic on people from minority ethnic groups [18]. We also over-sampled people identifying as from a sexual minority: 18% compared to the national proportion of 4% [19]. Our sample was drawn from a wide geographical area, but will have under-represented the digitally excluded, and over-represented people living in urban areas (and London in particular). We included people with a broad range of mental health conditions and who were supported in various healthcare settings. One further limitation of this paper is that the breadth of issues covered prevented an in-depth exploration in this paper of specific issues encountered by ethnic and sexual minority groups, or groups defined by ...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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