COVID-19 mental health ‘tsunami’ has not emerged: study
The psychological fallout from the pandemic has been minimal, according to a review.
The pandemic did not lead to the “tsunami” of mental health cases that many researchers and media outlets predicted, a large review has found.
Overall, there was little to no change in general mental health, anxiety or depressive symptoms during COVID-19 compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to Canadian researchers.
The McGill University–led authors analysed data from 137 studies that tracked outcomes in participants in the two years prior to the pandemic and at any time after 1 January 2020.
Writing in The BMJ, they concluded that “most symptom change estimates … were close to zero and not statistically significant, and significant changes were of minimal or small magnitudes”.
