Mental health and social isolation under repeated mild lockdowns in Japan

  1. Tetsuya Yamamoto
  2. Chigusa Uchiumi
  3. Naho Suzuki
  4. Nagisa Sugaya
  5. Eric Murillo-Rodriguez
  6. Sérgio Machado
  7. Claudio Imperatori
  8. Henning Budde

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

The influence of repeated lockdowns on mental health and social isolation is unknown. We conducted a longitudinal study of the influence of repeated mild lockdowns during two emergency declarations in Japan, in May 2020 and February 2021. The analyses included 7893 people who participated in all online surveys. During repeated mild lockdowns, mental and physical symptoms decreased overall, while loneliness increased and social networks decreased. Subgroup analyses revealed that depression and suicidal ideation did not decrease only in the younger age group (aged 18–29 years) and that younger and middle-aged people (aged 18–49 years), women, people with a history of treatment for mental illness, and people who were socially disadvantaged in terms of income had higher levels of mental and physical symptoms at all survey times. Additionally, comprehensive extraction of the interaction structure between depression, demographic attributes, and psychosocial variables indicated that loneliness and social networks were most closely associated with depression. These results indicate that repeated lockdowns have cumulative negative effects on social isolation and loneliness and that susceptible populations, such as young people and those with high levels of loneliness, require special consideration during repeated lockdown situations.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-022-12420-0
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.10.21261878: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: All participants completed the anonymous survey voluntarily and provided informed consent online.
    IRB: This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Social and Industrial Science and Technology, Tokushima University (approval number: 212) and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.
    Sex as a biological variableAdditionally, GEE models were used to examine differences in changes in outcome variables in subgroups focused on gender (men, women), age (18-29, 30-49, 50-64, ≥65), income (< ¥2 million (approximately £15000), ¥2-4 million, ¥4-6 million, ¥6-8 million, ≥¥8 million), and treatment for mental illness (currently in treatment, past treatment, past treatment and still in treatment, no treatment).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The analysis was performed using Matlab R2017a
    Matlab
    suggested: (MATLAB, RRID:SCR_001622)
    a (Mathworks Inc.) and SPSS (version 22.0; SPSS Japan Inc., Tokyo, Japan).
    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:
    Limitations: In this study, causal factors, such as which approach mitigates or exacerbates the effects of repeated mild lockdowns, have not yet been examined. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the effects of psychosocial variables such as coping strategies and lifestyles in the future. Additionally, since this study used only an online survey method, the mental health of groups without online access has not yet been examined. Further, since mental health indicators were based on self-reports rather than clinical diagnoses, they may not necessarily correspond to objective assessments by mental health professionals. Therefore, it is necessary to widely use non-online methods in the future to accumulate findings that can be generalised to a larger population. Finally, those who did not participate in the second wave of the survey had worse mental health compared to those who participated in both waves. Therefore, it should be noted that the present results using only those who participated in both waves may underestimate the impact of repeated lockdowns.

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    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 10.1101/2021.08.10.21261878 on medRxiv