Multiple time measurements of multidimensional psychiatric states from immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic to one year later: a longitudinal online survey of the Japanese population

  1. Taiki Oka
  2. Takatomi Kubo
  3. Nao Kobayashi
  4. Fumiya Nakai
  5. Yuka Miyake
  6. Toshitaka Hamamura
  7. Masaru Honjo
  8. Hiroyuki Toda
  9. Shuken Boku
  10. Tetsufumi Kanazawa
  11. Masanori Nagamine
  12. Aurelio Cortese
  13. Minoru Takebayashi
  14. Mitsuo Kawato
  15. Toshinori Chiba

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly affected the mental health of both infected and uninfected people. Although most psychiatric disorders have highly overlapping genetic and pathogenic backgrounds, most studies investigating the impact of the pandemic have examined only single psychiatric disorders. It is necessary to examine longitudinal trajectories of factors that modulate psychiatric states across multiple dimensions. About 2274 Japanese citizens participated in online surveys presented in December 2019 (before the pandemic), August 2020, Dec 2020, and April 2021. These surveys included nine questionnaires on psychiatric symptoms, such as depression and anxiety. Multidimensional psychiatric time-series data were then decomposed into four principal components. We used generalized linear models to identify modulating factors for the effects of the pandemic on these components. The four principal components can be interpreted as a general psychiatric burden, social withdrawal, alcohol-related problems, and depression/anxiety. Principal components associated with general psychiatric burden and depression/anxiety peaked during the initial phase of the pandemic. They were further exacerbated by the economic burden the pandemic imposed. In contrast, principal components associated with social withdrawal showed a delayed peak, with human relationships as an important risk modulating factor. In addition, being female was a risk factor shared across all components. Our results show that COVID-19 has imposed a large and varied burden on the Japanese population since the commencement of the pandemic. Although components related to the general psychiatric burden remained elevated, peak intensities differed between components related to depression/anxiety and those related to social withdrawal. These results underline the importance of using flexible monitoring and mitigation strategies for mental problems, according to the phase of the pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41398-021-01696-x
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.01.21261309: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The original and follow-up research designs were approved by the Ethics Committees of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) (approval No. 21-195 for the original study & 21-749 for the follow-up study).
    Consent: All participants read a full explanation of the study and gave informed consent before each survey.
    Sex as a biological variableDemographic variables were collected as follows: gender (women and men), age, job status (Self-employed, employed, unemployed and other), education history, household income per year (<4 million yen,
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot 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:
    Given the complex nature of the link between the current pandemic and mental health, this study has some limitations. First, long-term effects of this pandemic cannot be assessed yet. Second, the psychiatric scores assessed here did not include some important dimensions, such as psychotic symptoms. Third, our analysis focused on the Japanese population. Our understanding of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health would benefit from international comparisons, including race, culture, religion, and psychiatric states that were not assessed in this study. Finally, because our data were concatenated across time-points, the PCs reflected both temporal covariance and covariance between participants. Future work with more time points may help us clearly distinguish these two effects, to better understand the impact of the pandemic on mental health. In summary, time courses of nine psychiatric symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic were aggregated into three exacerbated, orthogonal principal components with different peaks, as well as different modulating factors. Our findings underline the importance of flexible approaches for mental health protections. Long-term monitoring and real-time reporting are both necessary to determine the full consequences of COVID-19 on mental health.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.01.21261309v1 on medRxiv