Effect of lockdown on mental health in Australia: evidence from a natural experiment analysing a longitudinal probability sample survey

What happened to the predicted COVID-19-induced suicide epidemic, and why?

“…Perhaps the most convincing and rigorous evidence for this hypothesis comes from Australia, where a natural experiment occurred because of the way one state, Victoria, was locked down for up to 111 days, while other states were kept open. Exploiting this natural experiment, Butterworth et al (2022) showed that lockdown led only to a small increase in mental ill-health (Mental Health Index-5 [MHI-5]) on average, but that mental ill-health effects were observed for mothers of young dependent children. This may have been because of the additional pressure imposed on mothers due to home-schooling for prolonged periods of time.…”

Public Health Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia: The Role of the Morrison Government

“…State governments are responsible for determining what public health measures are appropriate and implementing them—including managing the border quarantine arrangements and the testing, tracing, and isolation regime—and managing the hospital response. States are also responsible for developing strategies to mitigate potential mental health and other effects of restrictions, and to address equity issues in the management of health outcomes and care [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. The regulation of workplace health and safety was principally covered by state public health orders.…”

Public health ethics: critiques of the “new normal”

“…At similar times, Melbourne (Victoria) and Sydney (New South Wales) faced epidemics of closely related variants of covid19 and implemented different policies (Butterworth, Schurer et al 2022 ): Melbourne implemented a rapid, stringent lockdown while Sydney implemented less stringent measures and introduced these more slowly, in a stepwise manner [See Figure 1 ]. Although many might have expected that Melbourne’s "hard and fast" lockdown would be more effective at controlling the virus, the initial growth of the epidemics was overall similar and Melbourne even experienced a higher per-capita peak in cases 3 as well as worse mental health outcomes and a longer duration of highly coercive measures(Butterworth, Schurer et al 2022 ). This might at least be taken as evidence that rapid, stringent lockdowns are not always superior to slower introduction of less stringent measures in terms of long-term transmission control.…”