Abstract
People with severe mental ill health (SMI) experience a mortality gap of 15-20 years. COVID-19 has amplified population health inequalities, and there is concern that people with SMI will be disproportionately affected. Understanding how health risk behaviours have changed during the pandemic is important when developing strategies to mitigate future increases in health inequalities. We sampled from an existing cohort of people with SMI. Researchers contacted participants by phone or post to invite them to take part in a survey about how the pandemic had affected them. We asked people about their health risk behaviours and how these had changed during the pandemic. We created an index of changed behaviours, comprising dietary factors, smoking, lack of exercise, and drinking patterns. By creating data linkages, we compared their responses during pandemic restrictions to responses they gave prior to the pandemic. 367 people provided health risk data. The mean age of the participants was 50.5 (range = 20 to 86, SD ± 15.69) with 51.0% male and 77.4% white British. 47.5% of participants reported taking less physical activity during the pandemic and of those who smoke 54.5% reported smoking more heavily. Self-reported deterioration in physical health was significantly associated with an increase in health risk behaviours (adjusted OR for physical health 1.59, 95%CI 1.22-2.07; adjusted OR for Age 0.99, 95%CI 0.98-1.00). COVID-19 is likely to amplify health inequalities for people with SMI. Health services should target health risk behaviours for people with SMI to mitigate the immediate and long lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to impact on public health in ways that extend beyond the number of deaths attributable to coronavirus [1, 2]
We were funded to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in a sub-section of the Closing the Gap (CtG) clinical cohort and we identified participants for Optimising Well-being in Self-Isolation study (OWLS) [21]
It shows the changes in health related behaviours and mental and physical health measured in the OWLS COVID-19 study since the beginning of the pandemic
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to impact on public health in ways that extend beyond the number of deaths attributable to coronavirus [1, 2]. One possible impact on public health is a change in health related behaviours, which may be affected by the social measures introduced to limit the spread of the virus (pandemic restrictions) such as minimizing social contacts and staying at home. The pandemic restrictions, coupled with daily news coverage of the number of COVID-19 related deaths, are likely to impact on people in a variety of ways. The perceived risks of contracting COVID-19 may provide a ‘teachable moment’ that acts as a prompt to encourage people to make changes to their behaviour; such as cutting down on drinking alcohol and smoking or increasing physical activity [3]. Understanding how health risk behaviours have changed during the pandemic is important when developing strategies to mitigate future increases in health inequalities
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