Statewide restrictions during the pandemic not linked to worse mental health

Statewide restrictions during the pandemic not linked to worse mental health

“For the past several decades, our team has been examining the psychological impact of large-scale disasters on the population. In February 2020, we realized that the novel coronavirus, as it was called at the time, was likely to have an effect on the U.S. population in the months to come. We were particularly interested in the potential negative mental health effects of the associated restrictions placed on individuals throughout the pandemic, despite their potential for minimizing the spread of illness,” [said] Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, Senior Author, Distinguished Professor of Psychological Science, Medicine and Public Health, University of California Irvine. … Knowing someone who died because of COVID-19 or someone who had contracted COVID-19 were also significantly related to distress, loneliness, and symptoms of traumatic stress, according to Rebecca Thompson, PhD, the report’s first author and postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine.