Public health responses to the pandemic have focused on preventing the spread of the virus, limiting the number of deaths, and easing the burden on health care systems. But there’s also another, less visible potential epidemic we should be focusing on: mental illness.
Our recent study found that people’s mental health worsened following the onset of the pandemic. We discovered that by analyzing data provided by 17,452 adults in the United Kingdom who were surveyed in April as part of the UK Household Longitudinal Study. This is a large ongoing study of people who contribute data every year, some from as far back as 1992.