The mental health impact of COVID-19 and lockdown-related stressors among adults in the UK
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Abstract
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and subsequent lockdown may have affected the mental health of the population. This study examines whether there was an increase in the prevalence and incidence of common mental disorders (CMD) in the UK adult population during the first months of lockdown and whether changes in CMD were associated with stressors related to the pandemic and lockdown.
Methods
Longitudinal data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study waves 10–11: 2019–2020 and waves 1–4 of the COVID-19 monthly surveys in April ( n = 17 761) to July 2020 ( n = 13 754), a representative sample of UK adult population, were analysed. CMD was measured using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) (cut-off >2). Changes in CMD were analysed in relation to COVID-19 and social stressors.
Results
Around 29% of adults without CMD less than a year earlier had a CMD in April 2020. However, by July 2020, monthly incidence of CMD had reduced to 9%. Most employment, financial and psychological ‘shocks’ were at their highest levels in April and reduced steadily in later months. Despite the lifting of some lockdown conditions by July, stressors related to loneliness, unemployment, financial problems and domestic work continued to influence CMD.
Conclusion
Some COVID-19 policy responses such as furloughing may have been effective in mitigating the increase in CMD for some groups of employees. Despite some reduction in levels of pandemic and lockdown-related stressors by the middle of 2020, loneliness and financial stressors remained key determinants of incidence in CMD among the UK adult population.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.05.20146738: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All the standard errors in the regression model analyses were adjusted to take account of the clustered and stratified sample using the svy command in STATA. STATAsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.05.20146738: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All the standard errors in the regression model analyses were adjusted to take account of the clustered and stratified sample using the svy command in STATA. STATAsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.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.
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