The impact of the coronavirus lockdown on mental health: evidence from the United States

Abstract

The coronavirus outbreak has caused significant disruptions to people’s lives. We exploit variation in lockdown measures across states to document the impact of stay-at-home orders on mental health using real time survey data in the US. We find that the lockdown measures lowered mental health by 0.083 standard deviations. This large negative effect is entirely driven by women. As a result of the lockdown measures, the existing gender gap in mental health has increased by 61%. The negative effect on women’s mental health cannot be explained by an increase in financial worries or caring responsibilities.

The gender gap in mental well-being at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK

“…The Covid-19 pandemic caused large disruption to much of the population across the globe, and along many dimensions. This disruption negatively and substantially affected mental well-being (e.g., Adams-Prassl et al, 2022 , Davillas and Jones, 2021 , Banks and Xu, 2020 ). A body of empirical evidence now clearly shows that the effects on well-being were felt unequally, with differential outcomes by several socio-economic characteristics such as age ( Banks and Xu, 2020 , Davillas and Jones, 2021 , Zhou et al, 2020 , Daly et al, 2020 ), gender ( Banks and Xu, 2020 , Davillas and Jones, 2021 ) and ethnicity ( Proto and Quintana-Domeque, 2021 ).…”

“…We therefore consider this large gender gap as a highly stable feature of the pandemic period that warrants detailed attention. Our analysis goes beyond existing papers examining the gender gap at the onset of the pandemic ( Adams-Prassl et al, 2022 , Davillas and Jones, 2021 , Banks and Xu, 2020 ). We do this by using rich data both from before and during the pandemic from the UKHLS and UKTUS, that we analyse in a coherent framework, taking into account findings from both the economics and the psychology literature.…”

“…While most studies collect real-time data during the onset of the pandemic, they mostly rely on cross-sectional surveys with limited background characteristics of respondents (e.g. Adams-Prassl et al, 2020 , Andrew et al, 2020 , Sevilla and Smith, 2020 , Adams-Prassl et al, 2022 ). To this literature we provide systematic and rich nationally-representative evidence on changes in the exposures faced by men and women.…”

Impact of implementation timing on the effectiveness of stay-at-home requirement under the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons from the Italian Case

“…Lockdown, also known as stay-at-home requirement, has been one of the most significant and widespread NPIs implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic [14] . The implementation of large-scale extended periods of lockdown not only has resulted in significant damage for local and global economies [ 15 , 16 ], but also has significantly impacted the mental health of citizens, especially children and young people [17] , [18] , [19] . That is why, in case a novel infectious pathogen appears, it is important to understand when a strict lockdown should not be implemented in favor of a set of other NPIs.…”

Twice a “housewife”: On academic precarity, “hysterical” women, faculty mental health, and service as gendered care work for the “university family” in pandemic times

“…Professional pressures aside, preliminary data also points to the disproportionately negative mental health impacts of the COVID‐19 public health crisis on women (Adams‐Prassl et al., 2020). In the United States, general population rates of clinical depression have exponentially increased (Breslau et al., 2021) amid the pandemic with women still reporting markedly higher rates than men (33% vs 22%) (Ettman et al., 2020).…”