School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

Abstract

The spread of the novel coronavirus disease caused schools in Japan to close to cope with the pandemic. In response to the school closures, parents of students were obliged to care for their children during the daytime, when children usually were at school. Did the increase in the burden of childcare influence parents’ mental health? Based on short panel data from mid-March to mid-April 2020, we explore how school closures influenced the mental health of parents with school-aged children. Using a fixed-effects model, we find that school closures led to mothers of students suffering from worse mental health compared to other females, while the fathers’ mental health did not differ from that of other males. This tendency is only observed for less-educated mothers who had children attending primary school, not for those with children attending junior high school nor for more-educated mothers. The contribution of this paper is showing that school closures increased the inequality of mental health between genders and parents with different educational backgrounds.

Reasons for Suicide During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan

“…30 Furthermore, depression has been associated with the role of family caregiver, and being a woman was a risk factor for suicidal behaviors during the pandemic. [31][32][33] Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, risk factors for depression, anxiety, and physical health were disproportionally higher in Japanese women than in men. 33,34 Additionally, ever since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in suicide rates among women, a phenomenon that has also been observed internationally.…”

Building Emotional Resilience: Japanese Women’s Religious and Spiritual Coping Strategies in the Time of COVID-19

“…8-10); and the increase in family caregiving responsibilities due to kindergarten and school closures, partners' teleworking, and reduced eldercare services that fall on women's shoulders (Cabinet Office of Japan 2021a, p. 19). The deterioration of daily life conditions and the changes in lifestyles during the COVID-19-induced 'new-normal' are well-documented causes of a negative impact on mental health (Yamamura and Tsustsui 2021;Shigemura et al 2020;Lima et al 2020;Rajkumar 2020). A year into the pandemic, increasing socio-economic insecurity has intensified Japanese women's precarious status in employment, heightened unpaid workload, and undermined the living conditions of women across lower and middle social classes, a situation often exacerbated by their responsibility for caring for families.…”

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“…On that day, China officially counted 103,424 cases and 4846 deaths. 1 Because of the virus's contagiousness and lethality, as well as the many policy measures taken by governments worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is profoundly influencing all aspects of society ( Giuntella, Hyde, Saccardo, & Sadoff, 2020 ; Holmes et al, 2020 ; Proto & Zhang, 2021 ; Torales, O'Higgins, Castaldelli-Maia, & Ventriglio, 2020 ; Wan, 2020 ; Yamamura & Tsustsui, 2021 ), with pervasive negative effects that are likely to continue into the future ( Brooks et al, 2020 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Holmes et al, 2020 ; Xiang et al, 2020 ). The numerous sources of this strong psychological effect include fear of the infection's potentially dire consequences, the “cabin fever” associated with quarantine, the uncertain economic consequences of the lockdowns, and a flow of negative information on TV and social media.…”

“…Accordingly, we introduce life satisfaction and happiness as positive and depression as negative measures of mental health. These measures have been used in other studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic and also routinely in the well-being literature (see, e.g., Dolan et al, 2019 ; Lu, Nie, & Qian, 2020 ; Tubadji, 2021 ; Yamamura & Tsustsui, 2021 ).…”