Patterns of mental health problems before and after easing COVID-19 restrictions: Evidence from a 105248-subject survey in general population in China.

Depeng Jiang,Wenjuan Li,Haizhu Chen,Jian Chen,E Li,Huiyi Hu,Jing Lin,Kun Liu,Chendong Li,Yixiu Liu,Yingjie Zhang,Binglin Cui,Jianchang Jiang,Hua Zhang,Hui Pan,Shaoping Jiang,Xuan Chen,Xuejing Jiang,Wen-Jun Tu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255251

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has alarming implications for individual and population level mental health. Although the future of COVID-19 is unknown at present, more countries or regions start to ease restrictions. The findings from this study have provided the empirical evidence of prevalence and patterns of mental disorders in Chinese general population before and after easing most COVID-19 restrictions, and information of the factors associated with these patterns. A cross-sectional population-based online survey was carried out from February to March 2020 in the general population across all provinces in China. The 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) was incorporated in the survey. Latent class analyses were performed to investigate the patterns of mental disorders and multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine how individual and regional risk factors can predict mental disorder patterns. Four distinctive patterns of mental health were revealed in the general population. After the ease of most COVID-19 restrictions, the prevalence of high risk of mental disorders decreased from 25.8% to 20.9% and prevalence of being high risk of unhappiness and loss of confidence decreased from 10.1% to 8.1%. However, the prevalence of stressed, social dysfunction and unhappy were consistently high before and after easing restrictions. Several regional factors, such as case mortality rate and healthcare resources, were associated with mental health status. Of note, healthcare workers were less likely to have mental disorders, compared to other professionals and students. The dynamic management of mental health and psychosocial well-being is as important as that of physical health both before and after the ease of COVID-19 restrictions. Our findings may help in mental health interventions in other countries and regions while easing COVID-19 restrictions.

Highlights

Since China reported its first cases to the World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2019, over 140 million COVID-19 cases had been reported worldwide, with more than 3 million deaths by late April 2021 [1]
Four distinctive patterns of mental health were revealed in the general population
After the ease of most COVID-19 restrictions, the prevalence of high risk of mental disorders decreased from 25.8% to 20.9% and prevalence of being high risk of unhappiness and loss of confidence decreased from 10.1% to 8.1%

Summary

Introduction

Since China reported its first cases to the World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2019, over 140 million COVID-19 cases had been reported worldwide, with more than 3 million deaths by late April 2021 [1]. At least 200 countries have implemented varying degrees of restrictions on population movement to contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). While these interventions may be critical in mitigating the spread of the disease during the pandemic crisis, they have generated and intensified stress, as well as negatively affected mental health and well-beings of general population [2, 3]. The findings from this study have provided the empirical evidence of prevalence and patterns of mental disorders in Chinese general population before and after easing most COVID-19 restrictions, and information of the factors associated with these patterns

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Conclusion