Exploring the Mental Health and COVID-19

A repeated, cross-sectional online international survey of adults, 16 years and above, was carried out in 10 countries (United Kingdom, India, Canada, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia). The online questionnaire was based on published approaches to understand the psychological impact of COVID-19 and the resultant restrictions. Five standardised measures were included to explore levels of depression [patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9)], anxiety [generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) assessment], impact of trauma [the impact of events scale-revised (IES-R)], loneliness (a brief loneliness scale), and social support (The Multi-dimensional Scale of Perceived Social support).

There were two rounds of the online survey in 10 countries with 42866 participants in Round 1 and 92260 in Round 2. The largest number of participants recruited from the United Kingdom (112985 overall). The majority of participants reported receiving no support from mental health services throughout the pandemic. This study found that the daily cumulative COVID-19 cases had a statistically significant effect on PHQ-9, GAD-7, and IES-R scores. These scores significantly increased in the second round of surveys with the ordinary least squares regression results with regression discontinuity design specification (to control lockdown effects) confirming these results. The study findings imply that participants' mental health worsened with high cumulative COVID-19 cases.