COVID-19 pandemic tied to worse stress, depression among US adultsAcute stress and depression rates rose in US adults as COVID-19 cases and deaths accumulated from mid-March to mid-April, largely related to preexisting mental and physical conditions and stressors such as job and wage loss, according to a study of 6,514 people from three large, nationally representative cohorts.In the study, published late last week in Science Advances, researchers from the University of California at Irvine evaluated stress and depression symptoms using the NORC AmeriSpeak panel over three 10-day periods.Before the pandemic, participants reported, on average, one physical illness, and 17.7% had been diagnosed as having a mental illness.