Mental health responses to COVID-19 around the world
Background: The mental health impact of the COVID-19 crisis may differ from previously studied stressful events in terms of psychological reactions, specific risk factors, and symptom severity across geographic regions worldwide.Objective: To assess the impact of COVID-19 on a wide range of mental h...
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| Published in | European journal of psychotraumatology Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 1929754 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
United States
Taylor & Francis
01.01.2021
Taylor & Francis Ltd Taylor & Francis Group |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
| ISSN | 2000-8066 2000-8198 2000-8066 |
| DOI | 10.1080/20008198.2021.1929754 |
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| Summary: | Background: The mental health impact of the COVID-19 crisis may differ from previously studied stressful events in terms of psychological reactions, specific risk factors, and symptom severity across geographic regions worldwide.Objective: To assess the impact of COVID-19 on a wide range of mental health symptoms, to identify relevant risk factors, to identify the effect of COVID-19 country impact on mental health, and to evaluate regional differences in psychological responses to COVID-19 compared to other stressful events.Method: 7034 respondents (74% female) participated in the worldwide Global Psychotrauma Screen - Cross-Cultural responses to COVID-19 study (GPS-CCC), reporting on mental health symptoms related to COVID-19 (n = 1838) or other stressful events (n = 5196) from April to November 2020.Results: Events related to COVID-19 were associated with more mental health symptoms compared to other stressful events, especially symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and dissociation. Lack of social support, psychiatric history, childhood trauma, additional stressful events in the past month, and low resilience predicted more mental health problems for COVID-19 and other stressful events. Higher COVID-19 country impact was associated with increased mental health impact of both COVID-19 and other stressful events. Analysis of differences across geographic regions revealed that in Latin America more mental health symptoms were reported for COVID-19 related events versus other stressful events, while the opposite pattern was seen in North America.Conclusions: The mental health impact of COVID-19-related stressors covers a wide range of symptoms and is more severe than that of other stressful events. This difference was especially apparent in Latin America. The findings underscore the need for global screening for a wide range of mental health problems as part of a public health approach, allowing for targeted prevention and intervention programs.
In a large global sample, COVID-19 was associated with more severe mental health symptoms compared to other stressful or traumatic events.
The impact of COVID-19 on mental health differed around the world with an especially large impact in Latin America. |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23 Dean Ajdukovic, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, ORCID 0000-0001-9223-360X Wissam El-Hage, UMR 1253, iBrain, Université de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Inserm, Tours, France Christian H Kristensen, School of Health and Life Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, ORCID 0000-0002-8273-2146 Marylene Cloitre, National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Stanford University, Menlo Park, CA, USA, ORCID 0000-0001-8029-1570 Juliana A Lanza, Traumatic Stress Unit, Alvear Hospital - Human Factors SAME, Buenos Aires City, Argentina Juanita A Haagsma, Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands Julia Schellong, Medical Faculty, Clinic of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic, Technical University Dresden, ORCID 0000-0001-7614-3225 Erine E. Bröcker, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa, ORCID 0000-0002-9861-9527 Mihriban Heval Ozgen, LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands, ORCID 0000-0002-8933-7122 Xenia Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, Psychology Program, University of Nicosia, 1700 Nicosia, Cyprus, 0000-0002-3993-8229 Carolina Salgado, Universidad Catolica del Maule, Department of Psychiatry, Talca, Chile, ORCID 0000-0003-1886-8273 Nadezhda B Semenova, Scientific Research Institute of Medical Problems of the North, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation, ORCID 0000-0002-6120-7860 Atle Dyregrov, Center for crisis psychology, University of Bergen, Norway, ORCID 0000-0003-3281-030X Anne Bakker, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Meibergdreef 9, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, ORCID 0000-0002-3248-2441 Lucia Cantoni, University of Padua, Department of Phylosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Padua, Italy. Daniela Rabellino, Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, ORCID 0000-0002-3914-7363 Jackie June ter Heide, ARQ National Psychotrauma Centrum, Diemen, The Netherlands, ORCID 0000-0001-7593- 4359 Nancy Kassam-Adams, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Center for Injury Research & Prevention, Philadelphia, USA, ORCID 0000-0001-7412-142 Li Wang, Laboratory for Traumatic Stress Studies, CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, ORCID 0000-0002-1459-3412 Małgorzata Dragan, Facultry of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, ORCID 0000-0001-8221-2012 Ulrich Schnyder, University of Zurich, Switzerland, ORCID 0000-0003-3556-7990 Irina Zrnic, University of Vienna, Faculty of Psychology, Unit of Psychotraumatology, Vienna, Austria, ORCID 0000-0002-8583-7234 These authors contributed equally to this work Julian D Ford, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Dept Psychiatry, Farmignton CT, USA, ORCID 0000-0001-7923-0658 Angela Nickerson, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW Australia, ORCID 0000-0001-9171-4209 Helene F. Aakvaag, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, Oslo, Norway Erik LJL de Soir, Department of Scientific and Technological Research, Royal Higher Institute of Defence, Belgium, ORCID 0000-0002-0770-1614 Marcelo, F, Mello, Department of Psyhchiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, Brazil, ORCID 0000-0002-0475-4729 Jana D Javakhishvili, ILia State University, School of Arts and Science, Tbilisi, Georgia, ORCID 0000-0003-0196-7582 Davide Marengo, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy, ORCID 0000-0002-7107-0810 GPS-CCC consortium members are Rachel Langevin, McGill University, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, Montréal, Canada, ORCID 0000-0002-7671-745X Anne C Wagner, Remedy, Canada, ORCID 0000-0002-6261-0133 Luisa Sales, Centro De Trauma, CES, University of Coimbra, and Hospital Militar de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, 3000-995 Soraya Seedat, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa, ORCID 0000-0002-5118-786X Carmelo Vazquez, Faculty of Psychology, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, ORCID 0000-0003-1796-2161 Misari Oe, Department of Psychiatry, Kurume University School of Medicine, ORCID 0000-0003-4550-036X Sjacko Sobczak, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience (MHeNS), Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands, ORCID 0000-0001-6351-0479 Janaina Videira Pinto, The University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Sydney, Australia, ORCID 0000-0002-3976-5196 Andrew J Smith, University of Utah School of Medicine, Dept of Psychiatry, Huntsman Mental Health Institute, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Brigitte Lueger-Schuster, University of Vienna, Faculty of Psychology, Unit of Psychotraumatology, Vienna, Austria, ORCID 0000-0003-0784-8437 Leister SS Manickam, Centre for Applied Psychological Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, India |
| ISSN: | 2000-8066 2000-8198 2000-8066 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/20008198.2021.1929754 |