United Kingdom: A new study has found that COVID-19 may not have as great an impact on the mental health of most people as earlier research has indicated.

According to a review of 137 studies from around the world led by researchers at McGill University in Canada and published in the British Medical Journal, the pandemic resulted in “minimal” changes in mental health symptoms among the general population.

Mr. Brett Thombs, a psychiatry professor at McGill University and senior author, remarked that some of the public narrative around COVID-19’s impacts on mental health was based on “poor-quality studies and anecdotes,” which became “self-fulfilling prophecies,” and added that there was a need for more “rigorous science.”

“Mental health in COVID-19 is much more nuanced than people have made it out to be. Claims that the mental health of most people has deteriorated significantly during the pandemic have been based primarily on individual studies that are ‘snapshots’ of a particular situation in a particular place at a particular time. They rarely involve any long-term comparison with what came before or after,” Mr. Thombs observed.

According to the researchers, their findings were consistent with the largest study on suicide during the pandemic, which found no increase and applied to most groups, including different ages, sexes, genders, and whether people had pre-existing conditions. Three-quarters of the research focused on adults, mostly from middle- and high-income countries.

However, the research team remarked that women had experienced worsening anxiety, depression, or general mental health symptoms during the pandemic, possibly due to increased family responsibilities, more work in health or social care, or, in some cases, domestic abuse.

In addition, the researchers noted that depression symptoms had worsened by “minimal to small amounts” for older adults, university students, people who self-identified as belonging to a sexual or gender minority group, and parents.

The team concluded that governments and health agencies should provide better quality and more timely mental health data to better target resources and continue to properly fund services, especially for the groups worst affected by the pandemic.

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