COVID vaccines not only benefit physical health, they also improve mental health

The significant physical health benefits of COVID vaccines, particularly the significantly reduced risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death from the virus, are well known.

But what about the mental health benefits of vaccination? Does vaccination help reduce the psychological burden associated with COVID? And if so, how big are the positive effects?

We speculated that the COVID vaccination would be beneficial for people’s mental well-being as it could reduce anxiety about COVID (at least in relation to a person’s own health).

In a new study published in European Economic Report Using data from thousands of UK adults, we have shown that vaccination is associated with significant relief from the psychological burden associated with COVID.

To understand the mental health benefits of vaccination, we compared the mental well-being of people who had received the vaccine (one or two doses) versus those who had not. We used data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a large annual household survey that collects a wide range of information from adults living in the UK. We specifically looked at the data collected between January and March 2021.

The measure of mental well-being used in this study was the general health questionnaire. It consists of a 12-point scale for rating stress, anxiety and happiness.

A problem with simply comparing the mental well-being of both groups (those who were vaccinated and those who were not) is that there can be important differences between them. This may mean that we might confuse differences in mental well-being between groups with vaccinations when they could be due to other factors.

Our approach to this potential problem was to carefully match both groups so that those who were vaccinated were very similar to those who were not, in characteristics such as age, for example.

We also had a variable in the survey that measured whether people were willing to take a vaccine, which meant we could match both groups based on their willingness to get vaccinated. This could be important because people who refuse a vaccine, for example, due to lower trust in government may have lower well-being to begin with.

Our results suggest that vaccination resulted in a large reduction in psychological distress in the vaccinated group.

To understand how large this estimated effect was, we compared it to the estimated effect of other major life events on mental well-being (from other studies). The well-being benefits in the vaccinated group were about one-half to two-thirds of the mental well-being benefits associated with transitioning from unemployment to full employment.

differences between the age groups

It is important to note that while just under half of the respondents in our sample were vaccinated due to the phasing in of COVID vaccines, they were also half who were most likely to be at risk of contracting COVID.

However, we have had a significant number of people of all ages who have been vaccinated.

We examined whether there were differences in the mental well-being benefits of vaccination between different groups. Specifically, we compared the estimated psychological well-being benefits of vaccination for those below the median age (56) in our sample with those above that age. We also compared people classified as “clinically vulnerable” (those at higher risk of being harmed by infection) with those who were not.

We found that the mental well-being benefits associated with vaccination were heavily concentrated in the elderly and clinically vulnerable groups. Our proposed explanation is that without vaccination, the fear of contracting COVID would be particularly strong for this group.

On the other hand, when looking at younger groups who were not clinically susceptible, we found little evidence that vaccination resulted in any significant improvement in their psychological well-being.

It is perhaps worth noting that despite an overall successful COVID vaccination campaign in the UK, younger groups are most likely to express vaccination hesitation.

Our results may help explain this. Among young people, vaccine non-uptake may be primarily due to a lack of perceived benefits to their own well-being (balanced against perceived costs), as opposed to vaccine hesitancy in all cases.

This article was republished by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.