An overview of current mental health in the general population of Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from the COLLATE project

  1. Susan L Rossell
  2. Erica Neill
  3. Andrea Phillipou
  4. Eric J Tan
  5. Wei Lin Toh
  6. Tamsyn E Van Rheenen
  7. Denny Meyer

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113660
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.16.20155887: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: This study received ethics approval from Swinburne University Human Ethics Review Committee (approval number: 20202917-4107) and complied with the Declaration of Helsinki. Study Design and Population: On April 1st 2020, adult members of the Australian general public (aged 18+) were invited to participate in an anonymous ∼15-20mins online survey, completed at their convenience (i.e. the inclusion criteria to participate were being aged 18+ years and currently residing in Australia).
    Consent: After online consent, participants completed the survey which covered three broad topics: a) current concerns, b) current emotional experiences, and c) socio-demographics/risk factors.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableIn all, there were 12 categories for age (18-19; 20-24; 25-29; 30-34; 35-39; 40-44; 45-49; 50-54; 55-59; 60-64; 65-70; 70+), two categories for gender (male; female) and four categories for state (Victoria; New South Wales; Queensland; Australian Capital Territory + Northern Territory + Western Australia + South Australia + Tasmania).

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Measures: Statistical Analyses: Data were analyzed in SPSS v26.0.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    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:
    A limitation of the study was the snowballing approach to survey recruitment; this resulted in a non-representative sample of the Australian population, which included some respondents with known mental health diagnosis. To address this, weightings were used based on ABS data (ABS, 2016) to statistically correct for any bias. However, even with statistical weighting, it is difficult to account for specific subgroups, for example those without access to the internet. Furthermore, despite >8000 participants starting the survey, only ∼5500 had useable datasets due to considerable attrition (30%), which is albeit typical of online research. This data provides a snapshot of mental health and well-being of Australians in April 2020 in relation to COVID-19; to do so we compared current negative emotions to existing Australian norms. It is possible differences in sampling factors related to the current sample data and existing norms may explain some of the differences rather than COVID-19 itself. However, given the magnitude of our findings in terms of elevated negative emotions in the general community such sampling differences are unlikely to explain the large variance between current and norm data. We also did not assess the mental health of school-aged children and adolescents in the current survey, the majority are whom are being home-schooled and not permitted face-to-face contact with their peers in Australia at present. School-age children may thus be particularly vulnerable ...

    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.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.16.20155887v1 on medRxiv