'Women in the front': Psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: Depression, anxiety, loneliness, and somatization in the Israel population.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a high level of psychological distress in the general population. The aims of this study were to examine the mental health of men and women in the general population in Israel during the first lockdown. The sample comprised 587 participants (426 females and 161 males), whose age ranged between 16 and 85. They completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4), the Psychosomatic Symptoms Scale, and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC2). Psychological distress was expressed in our measures of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and somatization, in conjunction with high resilience. Women exhibited higher levels of these symptoms than men—but this fluctuates with age, and can match the levels of these symptoms reported by men. Specifically, no difference between the genders was found for loneliness, in age groups 24–39 and 56–85; and for depression, in age groups 40–55 and 56–85. For somatization, the difference is reversed for age group 56–85. In contrast, while women generally scored lower than the men for resilience, this was specifically for age group 16–23. Our findings suggest that young women report more mental health problems, and that men and women may be differentially vulnerable to disaster-related stressors, such as experienced during the pandemic.