Psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are heterogeneous but have stabilised over time: 1 year longitudinal follow-up of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) study

Mental health of adults in Ireland during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: results from a nationally representative, longitudinal study

“…Together these findings provide no evidence of an overall increase in mental health problems in the general adult population of Ireland during the first year of the pandemic, and to the contrary, suggest that there was a small overall decrease in mental health problems driven by declines in depression and anxiety. These findings are consistent with results from multiple large-scale longitudinal studies from UK (Fancourt, Steptoe, & Bu, 2021 ; Shevlin et al, 2021 ), and meta-analyses of pre-post pandemic changes in mental health symptoms (Prati & Mancini, 2021 ; Robinson et al, 2021 ). These findings stand in stark contradiction to concerns expressed at the outset of the pandemic that there would be a marked increase in mental health problems in the general population (Campion, Javed, Sartorius, & Marmot, 2020 ).…”

“…In a recent article in this journal, Shevlin et al ( 2021 ) reported that the mental health of adults in the UK, who were surveyed as part of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) study during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, could be the best described in terms of five profiles. They found that a small proportion of people (~5%) experienced increased symptoms of depression/anxiety and COVID-19-related posttraumatic stress disorder (C19-PTSD), a slightly higher proportion (~6–8%) experienced decreased symptoms of both, and the rest (>~80%) experienced no major changes across the year.…”

Mental health of adults in Ireland during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a nationally representative, longitudinal study

“…Together these findings provide no evidence of an overall increase in mental health problems in the general adult population of Ireland during the first year of the pandemic, and to the contrary, suggest that there was a small overall decrease in mental health problems driven by declines in depression and anxiety. These findings are consistent with results from multiple large-scale longitudinal studies from UK (Fancourt, Steptoe, & Bu, 2021;Shevlin et al, 2021), and meta-analyses of pre-post pandemic changes in mental health symptoms (Prati & Mancini, 2021;Robinson et al, 2021). These findings stand in stark contradiction to concerns expressed at the outset of the pandemic that there would be a marked increase in mental health problems in the general population (Campion, Javed, Sartorius, & Marmot, 2020).…”

“…In a recent article in this journal, Shevlin et al (2021) reported that the mental health of adults in the UK, who were surveyed as part of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) study during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, could be the best described in terms of five profiles. They found that a small proportion of people (∼5%) experienced increased symptoms of depression/anxiety and COVID-19-related posttraumatic stress disorder (C19-PTSD), a slightly higher proportion (∼6-8%) experienced decreased symptoms of both, and the rest (>∼80%) experienced no major changes across the year.…”

Sharing data to better understand one of the world's most significant shared experiences: data resource profile of the longitudinal COVID-19 psychological research consortium (C19PRC) study

“…Key publications relate to examining trends in the prevalence estimates of ‘caseness’ for common mental disorders at specific points in the pandemic [ 8 , 17 – 19 ] and longitudinal changes in mental health status over time [ 7 , 20 – 22 ]. For example, in the UK and Republic of Ireland, we have demonstrated that a sizeable proportion (~65%) of the adult population has been highly resilient or have reported improvements in their mental health during the period first year of the pandemic [ 20 , 23 , 24 ], and that there were no changes in the prevalence estimates of (past two-week) non-suicidal self-injury or attempted suicide in the Republic of Ireland between May and August 2020 [ 25 ]. Research outputs from the Spanish and Italian surveys have also identified patterns of pandemic-related resilience and post-traumatic growth [ 26 , 27 ].…”