A study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health reports a high global prevalence of both depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic and shows how implementation of mitigation strategies including public transportation and school closures, and stay-at-home orders impacted such disorders.
A study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health reports a high global prevalence of both depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic and shows how implementation of mitigation strategies including public transportation and school closures, and stay-at-home orders impacted such disorders. The results are published in Psychological Medicine.
“Our research found an elevated global prevalence of these mental health issues during COVID-19 and also revealed there was a wide variance in each at the region- and country-level,” said, João Castaldelli-Maia, MD, PhD, NIDA-INVEST Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology, and lead author. In particular, Asia (most studies came from China) presented lower levels of both anxiety and depression, compared to the other regions of the world. Closure of public transportation increased levels of anxiety, whether it was two weeks or four weeks past the passage of closure enactment, especially in Europe.”
Using an end date of July 29th, 2020, the researchers analyzed data from Pubmed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and medRxiv, among other databases, for depression and anxiety prevalence. They also reviewed the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker for the containment and closure policies indexes; and the Global Burden of Disease Study for previous levels of depression and anxiety. The WHO database which includes COVID literature for studies published by the same date was also used.
Read more at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
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