Increased Psychological Distress, Loneliness, and Unemployment in the Spread of COVID-19 over 6 Months in Germany.

Shuyan Liu,Stephan Heinzel,Matthias N Haucke,Andreas Heinz

doi:10.3390/medicina57010053

Shuyan Liu, Stephan Heinzel + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina57010053

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Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic poses a challenge to global mental health. Loneliness and isolation may put people at higher risk for increased psychological distress. However, there is a lack of research investigating the development of COVID-19-related distress over time. Materials and Methods: We undertook an online survey among general population (N = 1903) in Germany throughout 6 months from the peak transmission period in April to the off-peak period by September 2020. Results: We found that the average prevalence of psychological distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic significantly rose from 24% to 66% between the peak and off-peak transmission period, respectively. Unemployment rate and loneliness increased negative mental health outcomes, although the number of active COVID-19 cases decreased from April to September. Psychological distress scores increased mostly in female, young, and lonely people. Conclusions: Our results underline the importance of considering innovative alternatives to facilitate employment opportunities, distant contacts, and self-help over the course of the pandemic. Our study highlights the urgent need to pay attention to mental health services specifically targeting female, young, unemployed, and lonely people.

Highlights

The current COVID-19 pandemic has a massive impact on global mental health [1,2,3], causing sudden lifestyle changes through social distancing and isolation at home, with severe social and economic consequences [4,5]
The results show that the general population across countries experienced psychological distress and that the prevalence of psychological distress varied from low (11.5% (N = 410)
We explored whether the number of active COVID-19 cases as an indicator of the risk to become infected was correlated with distress and loneliness, and we explored the effects of age and gender

Summary

Introduction

The current COVID-19 pandemic has a massive impact on global mental health [1,2,3], causing sudden lifestyle changes through social distancing and isolation at home, with severe social and economic consequences [4,5]. COVID-19 cases dramatically increased, several countries initiated their own nationwide mental health surveys between the end of March and the middle of May 2020 [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. They used the same CPDI design, employed previously in China [10], to assess mental status of the general population during this period of peak transmission of COVID-19 [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]

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