Exposure to COVID-19 is a stronger predictor of distress than state restrictions six months after the onset of the pandemic, study finds
Despite concerns that stay-at-home orders and other government efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic could cause permanent damage to people’s mental health, research published by the American Association of Psychology found that state restrictions in the first half of the pandemic were not related to worse mental health.
The pandemic restrictions were not related to psychological distress
Instead, people with personal exposure to the virus and those who consume several hours of COVID-19-related media per day were more likely to experience distress, loneliness, and traumatic stress symptoms.
The results were published in the journal Health Psychology.
“Over the past few decades, our team has been examining the psychological impact of large-scale disasters on the population. In February 2020, we realized that the novel coronavirus, as it was called at the time, would likely have an effect on the US population. in the coming months, “said lead author Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychology, medicine and public health at the University of California Irvine. “We were particularly interested in the potential negative mental health effects of the associated restrictions imposed on people during the pandemic, despite their potential to minimize the spread of the disease.”
The researchers interviewed a nationally representative sample of more than 6,500 participants at the start of the pandemic from March 18 to April 18, 2020, then interviewed nearly 5,600 of the same participants about six months later, from September 26 to October 16, to measure how their mental health and their exposure to the virus changed over the course of the pandemic.
Respondents answered questions about symptoms of distress, loneliness and traumatic stress (acute and post-traumatic stress) experienced in the previous week; if they had contracted COVID-19; how many people they knew had come into contact with the virus or died from COVID-19; and how many hours on average they have spent each day in the past week consuming news related to the pandemic in traditional media, online news sources and social media platforms. The researchers then matched their responses to data on the spread of COVID-19 and government mitigation efforts, such as school closures and home stay orders in each respondent’s state.
