Nationwide pandemic restrictions not related to mental stress

Despite fears that stay-at-home orders and other government efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19 early in the pandemic would cause lasting damage to people’s mental health, a study published by the American Psychological Association found that government restrictions in First and foremost, six months of the pandemic was not associated with poorer mental health.

Instead, people who were personally exposed to the virus and those who consumed COVID-19-related media for several hours a day were most likely to experience stress, loneliness, and symptoms of traumatic stress.

The results were published in the journal health psychology.

“For several decades, our team has been studying the psychological effects of major disasters on the population. In February 2020, we determined that the novel coronavirus, as it was then called, is likely to have an impact on the U.S. population in the coming months,” said senior author Roxane Cohen Silver, Ph.D., a distinguished professor in Psychology, Medicine and Public Health at the University of California Irvine.”We were particularly interested in the possible negative mental health implications of the associated restrictions imposed on individuals during the pandemic, despite their potential to limit the spread of disease minimize.”

The researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 6,500 participants from March 18 to April 18, 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, and nearly 5,600 of the same participants about six months later from September 26 to October 16, to measure how their mental health was Health and their exposure to the virus changed as the pandemic progressed.

Respondents answered questions about symptoms of stress, loneliness, and traumatic stress (acute and post-traumatic stress) they had experienced in the previous week; whether they had contracted COVID-19; how many people they knew who had been exposed to or died from COVID-19; and how many hours they spent on average per day consuming pandemic-related news across traditional media, online news sources, and social media platforms over the past week. The researchers then compared their responses to data on the spread of COVID-19 and government containment efforts, such as school closures and stay-at-home orders, in each respondent’s state.

Researchers found that participants experienced more loneliness and symptoms of global distress, such as depression and anxiety, overall over the course of the six months, but their distress was not significantly associated with state-level restrictions. Instead, personal experiences with COVID (degree of illness, casualties) together with the amount of media about the pandemic that individuals were exposed to were stronger predictors of mental symptoms than government restrictions (mask requirements, closures, etc.) or case numbers or death rates.

Participants who responded that they had contracted COVID-19 during the first six months of the pandemic were the most likely to report poor mental health. Knowing someone who died from COVID-19 or someone who contracted COVID-19 was, according to Rebecca Thompson, Ph.D., the report’s first author and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine.

“Because a strong predictor of stress in our study was personal bereavement — knowing someone who was very ill or who had died was far more stressful than having government-level restrictions in place — future waves of COVID-19 and other potential pandemics should be addressed.” targeted interventions to prevent loss of life,” Thompson said. “Given this work, we would likely expect similar emergency responses in future pandemics, highlighting the importance of public health initiatives to curb the spread of disease in our communities .”

Longer hours of exposure to pandemic-related media coverage were also significantly associated with increasing symptoms of distress over time.

“In the first year of the pandemic, it was bad news all the time,” Silver said. “Repeated exposure to this content was unlikely to have any psychological benefits.”

In the event of future disasters or traumatic events, Silver recommends that individuals monitor their level of immersion in bad news (e.g., avoid “doom scrolling”) and consider specific times to review the news throughout the day.

“One can stay current without being overwhelmed by a constant onslaught of bad news,” Silver said.