The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adult mental health in the UK: A rapid systematic review

  1. Eleonore Batteux
  2. Jo Taylor
  3. Holly Carter

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background

There is evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental health of the UK population, but this needs synthesising to guide effective policy recommendations and ensure support is targeted to populations most at risk. We conducted a rapid systematic review of the evidence of the impact of COVID-19 and associated restrictions on the mental health of UK adults, including risk and protective factors.

Method

A range of databases were searched to identify eligible studies. Studies were eligible if they reported primary quantitative or qualitative research on the mental health of UK adults between March 2020 and March 2021. Journal publications and pre-prints were included. Reviews, position papers, protocol papers and studies published in languages other than English were excluded. The study authors screened papers for eligibility and included 102 papers in the analysis.

Results

The evidence from this review indicates that the mental health of UK adults has declined since the start of the pandemic, with different populations being unequally affected. Populations particularly affected are women, young adults, ethnic minorities, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, people with pre-existing conditions and people who have had COVID-19. Other risk factors include having to isolate and time spent watching pandemic related news. Protective factors include social contact and maintaining healthy behaviours, such as physical activity.

Conclusions

Policy should aim to discourage risky behaviours while ensuring support is available for people to engage in protective behaviours. Interventions should be directed towards populations that have been most adversely affected. Addressing the decline in mental health across the UK population since the COVID-19 pandemic will require increasing mental health provision and ensuring equitable access to support.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.23.21262469: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Sources searched included Medline, Embase, PsycINFO,
    Medline
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    Embase
    suggested: (EMBASE, RRID:SCR_001650)
    PsycINFO
    suggested: (PsycINFO, RRID:SCR_014799)
    iSearch Covid 19 portfolio (preprints only), Evidence Aid, Ireland National Health Library and Knowledge Service Evidence Summaries, NICE Covid guidelines, Cochrane Special Collections, Oxford Covid19 Evidence Service, CADTH, Health Information and Quality Authority Ireland
    Cochrane Special Collections
    suggested: None

    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 and future directions: This review shows that there is a reasonable amount of evidence already available on the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, including the groups that have been particularly affected. However, it does present limitations. Due to the large amount of research available on mental health since the start of the pandemic and the broad focus on the UK population as a whole, evidence relating to less common psychiatric disorders was deemed out of scope for this review. Future research should seek to address whether the COVID-19 pandemic has also increased the prevalence of conditions such as psychosis and bipolar disorder, as has been previously discussed [106]. This review was restricted to UK adults, although a systematic review of children and adolescents’ mental health alongside recommendations would be beneficial in light of restrictions such as school closures and evidence they have been impacted as well [107, 108]. The review was also limited to UK-based studies, whereas it would be useful to conduct a more international review to understand the effects of the pandemic beyond the UK and inform recommendations on a global scale. Due to the rapid nature of this review, a risk of bias assessment of each included study was not conducted. However, we can speak to limitations across studies which limit the findings of this review. A significant proportion of studies in this review analysed data collected from two large online...

    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.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.23.21262469 on medRxiv