COVID-19 Lockdowns Contributed to ‘Collective Trauma’ Among Americans: Psychologists

The American Psychological Association says that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns caused mass trauma among adults that still persists today.

People wearing protective face masks walk on the street in a file photo. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

The United States is still reeling from the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns and other aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic as Americans have suffered a “collective trauma,” the American Psychological Association (APA) has said, citing a study.

While the national health emergency caused by the COVID-19 outbreak officially came to an end on May 11, in some ways the country hasn’t returned to “normal.” according to the organization.

The APA concluded in the results of its survey, released on Nov. 1, that there are “signs of collective trauma among all age cohorts” in the United States.

“The COVID-19 pandemic created a collective experience among Americans. While the early-pandemic lockdowns may seem like the distant past, the aftermath remains,” Arthur C. Evans Jr., the organization’s CEO, said in a statement.

The study found that adults between the ages of 34 and 44 reported the biggest surge in chronic health conditions since the pandemic, rising to 58 percent in 2023 from 48 percent in 2019.

The same age group also experienced the biggest jump in mental health illnesses, chiefly anxiety and depression. These rose to 45 percent this year from 31 percent in 2019, according to the study.

Chronically elevated levels of stress create risks for various mental health challenges and wear down the immune system, according to the APA. The association noted that the data suggest that long-term stress sustained since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on Americans’ well-being.

“We cannot ignore the fact that we have been significantly changed by the loss of more than one million Americans, as well as the shift in our workplaces, school systems, and culture at large,“ Mr. Evans said. ”To move toward posttraumatic growth, we must first identify and understand the psychological wounds that remain.”

Chronic stress can cause inflammation, breaking down the immune system and raising the risk of all sorts of ailments, including stroke and heart disease, the APA warned.

The study is the latest that suggests that the heavy-handed response to the outbreak, which included school closures, business shutdowns, and near-universal mask-wearing, has had a negative effect on people’s physical and mental health.

Child Gun Deaths Rise Sharply

Recent research on child gun deaths adds heart-wrenching evidence to the growing pile of data suggesting that COVID-19 lockdowns and other restrictions had a devastating effect on society.

The study, authored by researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital and published on Oct. 5 in a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that injury-related deaths among children rose sharply during the pandemic years 2020–21.

The spike in pediatric fatal injuries was driven by drugs and injuries involving firearms.

In 2021, when lockdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions were pervasive, more child homicides (2,279) and suicides (1,078) by gun were recorded than in any year since 1999, according to the study.

Some see a clear causal link between the explosion in child gun deaths and pandemic lockdown policies, which other studies have linked to a variety of negative outcomes, including delayed health treatments, learning loss, and mental health crises.

“Due to lockdowns and other misconceived pandemic policies, child gun deaths in the United States exploded exponentially in 2020,” Kevin Bass, a researcher and doctoral student in medicine, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

While the study shows that firearm-related homicides began rising in 2018, Mr. Bass said that it’s “very clear that the huge leap to record levels occurred between 2019 and 2020, which is when lockdowns happened.”

The study’s findings dovetail with an April report from the Pew Research Center, which found that the number of children and teenagers killed by gunfire surged by 50 percent between 2019 and 2021.

Some studies have identified lockdowns as contributing to jumps in suicides, mental health crises, learning loss, and delayed health treatments.

Other studies have suggested that lockdowns worked to stem the spread of the virus.

“Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission,” wrote the authors of the study backing restrictive measures, although the research didn’t evaluate any other unintended impacts of the measures.

However, one recent study that looked at a wide array of research into lockdowns concluded that such measures can be an effective tool in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic but only if “long-term collateral damage is neglected.”

“The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save,” the study’s authors wrote.

The authors also said that what deserves a “special and urgent analysis” is the question of “to what extent, why, and how the dissenting (disapproved by healthcare officials) scientific opinions were suppressed during COVID-19.”

“Suppression of ‘misleading’ opinions causes not only grave consequences for scientists’ moral compass; it prevents the scientific community from correcting mistakes and jeopardizes (with a good reason) public trust in science,” they wrote.