Covid-19 has been a traumatic event, weighing on our mental health. Isolation, fear of the virus, financial hardship, grief, and anxiety about the future have taken a heavy toll.
Past large-scale traumas carry lessons for the present. Such events, especially when they drive financial shocks, can lead to increases in psychological disorders and suicide attempts. See our recent work on this in @AmJEpi. https://bit.ly/2ZNMTZ0 ">https://bit.ly/2ZNMTZ0&q...
Now, our new study in @JAMANetworkOpen suggests the prevalence of depression in the US was more than three times higher during Covid-19 than before the pandemic. https://bit.ly/3bjcX24 ">https://bit.ly/3bjcX24&q...
Centrally, we found that having more financial resources was linked to a lower risk of depressive symptoms, both before and during Covid-19.
These data suggest mitigating Covid-19 in the near-term and building more resilient populations going forward will take significant economic interventions, as part of a broader engagement with the contextual factors which shape mental health at the population level.
Thank you, @CatherineEttman, for leading this work, and @SalmaMHAbdalla, @GregoryHCohen, @LauraSampson611, and Patrick Vivier for your partnership.