Tracking the mental health of home-carers during the first COVID-19 national lockdown: evidence from a nationally representative UK survey
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Abstract
Background
Unpaid carers who look after another member of their household (home-carers) have poorer mental health than the general population. The first COVID-19 national lockdown led to an increasing reliance on home-carers and we investigate the short- and longer-term impacts of lockdown on their mental health.
Methods
Data from 9737 adult participants (aged 16+) from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) were used to explore changes in 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) score between (a) pre-pandemic (2019) and early lockdowns (April 2020) and (b) early and later (July 2020) lockdowns.
Results
GHQ-12 scores among home-carers were higher pre-lockdown and increased more than for non-carers from 2019 to April 2020 with further increases for home-carers compared with non-carers between April and July. Compared with respondents caring for a spouse/partner, those caring for a child under 18 had a particularly marked increase in GHQ-12 score between 2019 and April, as did those caring for someone with a learning disability. Home-carers of children under 18 improved from April to July while those caring for adult children saw a marked worsening of their mental health. Home-carers with greater care burden saw larger increases in GHQ-12 score from 2019 to April and from April to July, and increases through both periods were greater for home-carers who had formal help prior to lockdown but then lost it.
Conclusions
The mental health of home-carers deteriorated more during lockdown than non-carers. Policies that reinstate support for them and their care-recipients will benefit the health of both vulnerable groups.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.25.21250437: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable 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:However, there are also some limitations. Comparison with caring status in pre-pandemic waves suggests that home-carers may have been under-represented in the COVID surveys; however, the use of analytical weights means that our …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.25.21250437: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable 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:However, there are also some limitations. Comparison with caring status in pre-pandemic waves suggests that home-carers may have been under-represented in the COVID surveys; however, the use of analytical weights means that our results are likely to be generalizable to the UK population. In contrast to previous work,(Gallagher & Wetherell, 2020) we considered caring status during rather than before lockdown as the pandemic created new caring roles.(Carers UK, 2020b) However, this was measured in July, and so may not accurately reflect circumstances in April although the error is likely to be small and results for new and pre-existing home-carers were almost identical. Although detailed data were available on the caring experiences of respondents during the pandemic these were not exhaustive; for example we lacked information regarding the type of care provided. Finally, we consider mental health at the beginning of the first lockdown and as it progressed. However, given further national lockdowns, it will be important to revisit these issues to investigate the short- and longer-term impacts of repeated restrictions and reduced support on the mental health of carers.
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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