Study: Early state lockdowns not tied to worse mental healthNew research from the American Psychological Association (APA) shows that various state restrictions and lockdowns imposed during the first 6 months of the pandemic were not related to worsening mental health.
The study is published in Health Psychology.The research was based on data collected from a survey of more than 6,500 participants at the start of the pandemic from Mar 18 to Apr 18, 2020, and answers were compared with the same survey given to 5,600 of the same participants about 6 months later: from Sep 26 to Oct 16, 2020.The survey contained questions about symptoms of distress, loneliness, and traumatic stress (acute and post-traumatic stress) that respondents experienced in the prior week.
Participants were also asked if they knew anyone with COVID-19, and how much news and social media they consumed about the pandemic.Though loneliness and symptoms of distress increased for participants during the first 6 months of the pandemic, those feelings were not related to state lockdowns, and instead were correlated with knowing someone who had the virus, and consuming a lot of pandemic-related media."There were robust significant relationships between personal direct experiences with the pandemic—that is, knowing someone who got very sick or died or getting sick oneself—and increased global distress, loneliness, and traumatic stress symptoms," the authors concluded."Personal experiences may be more strongly and uniquely associated with psychological symptomatology than are state-level restrictions."First author Rebecca Thompson, PhD, said in an APA news release, "Because a strong predictor of distress in our study was personal bereavement—knowing someone who