A study published by the American Psychological Association found that state restrictions during the first six months of the pandemic were not associated with worse mental health, in spite of worries that stay-at-home orders and other government initiatives to stop the spread of COVID-19 would have a long-term negative impact on people’s mental health.
Instead, those who had direct contact with the virus and those who watched multiple hours of COVID-19-related media each day were more likely to develop anxiety, loneliness, and traumatic stress symptoms.
The findings were published in the journal Health Psychology.
“For the past several decades, our team has been examining the psychological impact of large-scale disasters on the population. In February 2020, we realized that the novel coronavirus, as it was called at the time, was likely to have an effect on the U.S. population in the months to come,” said senior author Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychological science, medicine and public health at the University of California Irvine.
“We were particularly interested in the potential negative mental health effects of the associated restrictions placed on individuals throughout the pandemic, despite their potential for minimizing the spread of illness.”
The researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 6,500 participants at the start of the pandemic from March 18 to April 18, 2020, then surveyed almost 5,600 of the same participants approximately six months later from Sept. 26 to Oct. 16 to measure how their mental health and exposure to the virus changed over the course of the pandemic.
Respondents provided information on their past-week experiences with symptoms of distress, loneliness, and traumatic stress (acute and post-traumatic stress), as well as whether or not they had contracted COVID-19, how many people they knew who had contracted the virus or perished as a result of COVID-19, and the average number of hours per day they had spent over the previous week reading about the pandemic in traditional media, online news sources, and social media.
Because a strong predictor of distress in our study was personal bereavement knowing someone who had been very sick or died was far more stressful than the presence of state-level restrictions future waves of COVID-19 and other potential pandemics should be met by targeted interventions to prevent loss of life.
Rebecca Thompson
After that, the researchers compared their answers to information on the spread of COVID-19 and government mitigation measures in each respondent’s state, such as school closings and stay-at-home directives.
During the course of the six months, participants generally felt more alone and global distress symptoms including despair and anxiety, but these symptoms were not significantly correlated with state-level restrictions, according to research.
Instead, personal experiences with COVID (degree of illness, losses), along with the amount of media about the pandemic to which individuals were exposed, were stronger predictors of psychological symptoms than state-level restrictions (mask mandates, closures, etc.) or case rates or death rates.
The majority of participants who said they had COVID-19 in the first six months of the epidemic reported having poor mental health. Rebecca Thompson, PhD, the report’s first author and a postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine, claims that discomfort, loneliness, and signs of traumatic stress were also strongly correlated with knowing someone who died as a result of COVID-19 or someone who had contracted COVID-19.
“Because a strong predictor of distress in our study was personal bereavement knowing someone who had been very sick or died was far more stressful than the presence of state-level restrictions future waves of COVID-19 and other potential pandemics should be met by targeted interventions to prevent loss of life,” Thompson said.
“Given this work, we would likely expect similar distress responses in future pandemics, highlighting the importance of public health initiatives to curb the spread of illness in our communities.”
Greater hours of exposure to pandemic-related media coverage were also significantly related to increased symptoms of distress over time.
“For the first year of the pandemic, it was all bad news all the time,” Silver said. “Repeated exposure to that content was unlikely to have psychological benefits.”
Silver advises people to limit how much they immerse themselves in negative news (e.g., avoid “doomscrolling”) and to think about certain times to check the news throughout the day in the event of future disasters or traumatic events.
“One can stay informed without becoming overwhelmed with a constant onslaught of bad news,” said Silver.
