Changes in Prevalence of Mental Illness Among US Adults During Compared with Before the COVID-19 Pandemic

The authors review trend and cohort surveys and administrative data comparing prevalence of mental disorders during, versus, and before the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in mental health disparities. Best evidence suggests clinically significant anxiety-depression point prevalence increased by relat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Psychiatric clinics of North America Vol. 45; no. 1; p. 1
Main Authors Kessler, Ronald C, Chiu, Wai Tat, Hwang, Irving H, Puac-Polanco, Victor, Sampson, Nancy A, Ziobrowski, Hannah N, Zaslavsky, Alan M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.03.2022
Subjects
Adult
Anxiety - epidemiology
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Depression - epidemiology
Humans
Mental Disorders - epidemiology
Pandemics
Prevalence
SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19
Trend study
Mental disorders
Cohort study
Health disparities
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Summary:The authors review trend and cohort surveys and administrative data comparing prevalence of mental disorders during, versus, and before the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in mental health disparities. Best evidence suggests clinically significant anxiety-depression point prevalence increased by relative-risk (RR) = 1.3 to 1.5 during the pandemic compared with before. This level of increase is much less than the implausibly high RR = 5.0 to 8.0 estimates reported in trend studies early in the pandemic based on less-appropriate comparisons. Changes in prevalence also occurred during the pandemic, but relative prevalence appears not to have changed substantially over this time.
ISSN:1558-3147
DOI:10.1016/j.psc.2021.11.013