People already diagnosed with a mental disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms afterwards. This is one result from the first systematic review of longitudinal studies following their study population from before to during the first eighteen months of the pandemic. The paper is published in the journal Psychological Medicine.
In total, the researchers found almost 10,000 studies on the mental effects of the COVID pandemic published in the first 18 months of the pandemic. After selecting those that met their inclusion criteria, 97 publications remained, which the team then went through from start to finish.Instead of simple results, such as that mental health problems generally increased, the results were 'messy and mixed," Fried says.
Some general conclusions did stand out. For instance, there was a clear increase in symptoms in the domains of"anxiety" and"depression."increased in all studies that had looked into it."Symptom increase was particularly elevated for people with washing-checking related symptoms," Fried specifies."Which should come as no surprise."
In contrast, for PTSD, for which only five studies could be included in the review, the results were highly varied."But what really surprised us," says Fried, 'was that people who had already been diagnosed with abefore the pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms. Except—again—in the domain of obsessive-compulsive disorders."
Children and adolescents presented the strongest increases in symptoms across the board, and women between ages 20 and 40 showed a prominent increase in anxiety and depression symptoms. The latter is consistent with studies showing that care-giving work increased for women, in particular in times when schools were closed down.What is further striking is that symptoms sometimes even decreased during the COVID period.
"I can only speculate as to why, there is much we don't know. But you can think of some explanations. For example, some students may have experienced lower levels of school stress during lockdowns, and perhaps teachers were more accommodating," says Fried.responding during the pandemic varied as a function of both symptom cluster and sample characteristics. Variability in responding should therefore be a key consideration guiding future research and intervention.
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