Cargando…
Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated national lockdowns have been linked to deteriorations in mental health worldwide. A number of studies analysed changes in mental health indicators during the pandemic; however, these studies generally had a small number of timepoints, and focused...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8743441/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35012486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03655-8 |
_version_ | 1784629905450860544 |
---|---|
author | Pedersen, Michelle T. Andersen, Thea O. Clotworthy, Amy Jensen, Andreas K. Strandberg-Larsen, Katrine Rod, Naja H. Varga, Tibor V. |
author_facet | Pedersen, Michelle T. Andersen, Thea O. Clotworthy, Amy Jensen, Andreas K. Strandberg-Larsen, Katrine Rod, Naja H. Varga, Tibor V. |
author_sort | Pedersen, Michelle T. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated national lockdowns have been linked to deteriorations in mental health worldwide. A number of studies analysed changes in mental health indicators during the pandemic; however, these studies generally had a small number of timepoints, and focused on the initial months of the pandemic. Furthermore, most studies followed-up the same individuals, resulting in significant loss to follow-up and biased estimates of mental health and its change. Here we report on time trends in key mental health indicators amongst Danish adults over the course of the pandemic (March 2020 - July 2021) focusing on subgroups defined by gender, age, and self-reported previously diagnosed chronic and/or mental illness. METHODS: We used time-series data collected by Epinion (N=8,261) with 43 timepoints between 20 March 2020 and 22 July 2021. Using a repeated cross-sectional study design, independent sets of individuals were asked to respond to the Copenhagen Corona-Related Mental Health questionnaire at each timepoint, and data was weighted to population proportions. The six mental health indicators examined were loneliness, anxiety, social isolation, quality of life, COVID-19-related worries, and the mental health scale. Gender, age, and the presence of previously diagnosed mental and/or chronic illness were used to stratify the population into subgroups for comparisons. RESULTS: Poorer mental health were observed during the strictest phases of the lockdowns, whereas better outcomes occurred during reopening phases. Women, young individuals (<34 yrs), and those with a mental- and/or chronic illness demonstrated poorer mean time-series than others. Those with a pre-existing mental illness further had a less reactive mental health time-series. The greatest differences between women/men and younger/older age groups were observed during the second lockdown. CONCLUSIONS: People with mental illness have reported disadvantageous but stable levels of mental health indicators during the pandemic thus far, and they seem to be less affected by the factors that result in fluctuating time-series in other subgroups. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-021-03655-8. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8743441 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87434412022-01-10 Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark Pedersen, Michelle T. Andersen, Thea O. Clotworthy, Amy Jensen, Andreas K. Strandberg-Larsen, Katrine Rod, Naja H. Varga, Tibor V. BMC Psychiatry Research BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated national lockdowns have been linked to deteriorations in mental health worldwide. A number of studies analysed changes in mental health indicators during the pandemic; however, these studies generally had a small number of timepoints, and focused on the initial months of the pandemic. Furthermore, most studies followed-up the same individuals, resulting in significant loss to follow-up and biased estimates of mental health and its change. Here we report on time trends in key mental health indicators amongst Danish adults over the course of the pandemic (March 2020 - July 2021) focusing on subgroups defined by gender, age, and self-reported previously diagnosed chronic and/or mental illness. METHODS: We used time-series data collected by Epinion (N=8,261) with 43 timepoints between 20 March 2020 and 22 July 2021. Using a repeated cross-sectional study design, independent sets of individuals were asked to respond to the Copenhagen Corona-Related Mental Health questionnaire at each timepoint, and data was weighted to population proportions. The six mental health indicators examined were loneliness, anxiety, social isolation, quality of life, COVID-19-related worries, and the mental health scale. Gender, age, and the presence of previously diagnosed mental and/or chronic illness were used to stratify the population into subgroups for comparisons. RESULTS: Poorer mental health were observed during the strictest phases of the lockdowns, whereas better outcomes occurred during reopening phases. Women, young individuals (<34 yrs), and those with a mental- and/or chronic illness demonstrated poorer mean time-series than others. Those with a pre-existing mental illness further had a less reactive mental health time-series. The greatest differences between women/men and younger/older age groups were observed during the second lockdown. CONCLUSIONS: People with mental illness have reported disadvantageous but stable levels of mental health indicators during the pandemic thus far, and they seem to be less affected by the factors that result in fluctuating time-series in other subgroups. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-021-03655-8. BioMed Central 2022-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8743441/ /pubmed/35012486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03655-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Pedersen, Michelle T. Andersen, Thea O. Clotworthy, Amy Jensen, Andreas K. Strandberg-Larsen, Katrine Rod, Naja H. Varga, Tibor V. Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title | Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title_full | Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title_fullStr | Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title_full_unstemmed | Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title_short | Time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark |
title_sort | time trends in mental health indicators during the initial 16 months of the covid-19 pandemic in denmark |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8743441/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35012486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03655-8 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT pedersenmichellet timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT andersentheao timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT clotworthyamy timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT jensenandreask timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT strandberglarsenkatrine timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT rodnajah timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark AT vargatiborv timetrendsinmentalhealthindicatorsduringtheinitial16monthsofthecovid19pandemicindenmark |