Mental health responses to COVID-19 around the world
Open accessAbstract
Background: The mental health impact of the COVID-19 crisis may differ from previously studied stressful events in terms of psychological reactions, specific risk factors, and symptom severity across geographic regions worldwide.Objective: To assess the impact of COVID-19 on a wide range of mental health symptoms, to identify relevant risk factors, to identify the effect of COVID-19 country impact on mental health, and to evaluate regional differences in psychological responses to COVID-19 compared to other stressful events.Method: 7034 respondents (74% female) participated in the worldwide Global Psychotrauma Screen – Cross-Cultural responses to COVID-19 study (GPS-CCC), reporting on mental health symptoms related to COVID-19 (n = 1838) or other stressful events (n = 5196) from April to November 2020.Results: Events related to COVID-19 were associated with more mental health symptoms compared to other stressful events, especially symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and dissociation. Lack of social support, psychiatric history, childhood trauma, additional stressful events in the past month, and low resilience predicted more mental health problems for COVID-19 and other stressful events. Higher COVID-19 country impact was associated with increased mental health impact of both COVID-19 and other stressful events. Analysis of differences across geographic regions revealed that in Latin America more mental health symptoms were reported for COVID-19 related events versus other stressful events, while the opposite pattern was seen in North America.Conclusions: The mental health impact of COVID-19-related stressors covers a wide range of symptoms and is more severe than that of other stressful events. This difference was especially apparent in Latin America. The findings underscore the need for global screening for a wide range of mental health problems as part of a public health approach, allowing for targeted prevention and intervention programs.
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Compared with general stressful events, more severe mental health outcomes, especially PTSD, have developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Compared to the effects of general stressful events, more severe mental health outcomes, especially posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have developed during the pandemic (Olff et al., 2021).”
From Efficacy and mechanisms of mobile application-delivered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in China: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial (2022) · cites this paper as Olff et al., 2021
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“Compared to the effects of general stressful events, more severe mental health outcomes, especially posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have developed during the pandemic (Olff et al., 2021).”
Background
- Authors
- Olff, M., Primasari, I., Qing, Y., Coimbra, B. M., Hovnanyan, A., Grace, E., Williamson, R. E., Hoeboer, C. M., & Consortium, T. G.-C.
- Affiliations
- Amsterdam UMC Location University of Amsterdam (NL)
- Universidade Federal de São Paulo (BR)
- University of Padua (IT)
- The Chicago School (US)
- St. Lawrence College (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Olff, Miranda
- ORCID
- Venue
- European Journal of Psychotraumatology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1929754-1929754
- ISSN
- 2000-8066 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8253206
- OpenAlex
- W3177413821
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 13.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- European Journal of Psychotraumatology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Institutional Research Information System University of Turin (University of Turin) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Estudo Geral (Universidad de Coimbra) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Pure Amsterdam UMC (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PUCRS Repository (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Figshare (cc-by)
- Funders
- the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (S-395/LPDP.3/2019)
- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001; the CARIPARO (Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo) Foundation research fellowship
- Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, mental health, psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, insomnia, dissociation, life events, social support, childhood trauma, resilience, regional variation, Latin America, North America, mental health screening
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