The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on people’s mental health around the world. A new report from Gallup shows that depression rates in the US have risen to 18%, a record high, since the outbreak of the virus. The report also reveals that nearly three in 10 adults have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime.
The pandemic has affected different groups of people differently. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some of the sharpest increases in anxiety and depression symptoms were among males, Asian Americans, young adults, and parents with children in the home. These groups reported about four times higher rates of mental health problems between April 2020 and August 2021 than they did in 2019.
Gender, age and race are some of the factors that influence depression rates. The Gallup report shows that women have significantly higher lifetime rates of clinical depression than men (36% vs 21%), and that these rates have risen twice as fast as in men since before the pandemic. The report also shows that for the first time, Black and Hispanic adults have matched or surpassed White adults in lifetime rates of clinical depression (29%, 28% and 27%, respectively).
“The fact that Americans are more depressed and struggling after this time of incredible stress and isolation is perhaps not surprising,” said Dr. Rebecca Brendel, president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which was not involved in the new research. “There are lingering effects on our health, especially our mental health, from the past three years that disrupted everything we knew.”
However, not all experts agree on the extent of the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. A study published in The Lancet estimated that cases of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders increased by 28% and 26%, respectively, globally as a consequence of the pandemic. But some researchers challenged these estimates, arguing that they were likely to be substantially inflated.
“However, we propose that these prevalence estimates are likely to be substantially inflated,” wrote Michael Daly and Eric Robinson, authors of a correspondence article published alongside the study in The Lancet. They pointed out that decades of trauma research has shown that most people tend to recover or show resilience after negative life events such as bereavement or disaster exposure. They also cited a meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies that found that symptoms of anxiety or depression declined significantly over time and were indistinguishable from prepandemic symptom profiles within a few months of the outbreak.
Brendel acknowledged that psychological adaptation is an important factor to consider when assessing the mental health impact of COVID-19. She also said that awareness around mental health has grown during the pandemic, which could lead to higher rates of diagnoses.
“We’re making it easier to talk about mental health and looking at it as part of our overall wellness just like physical health,” Brendel said. “People are aware of depression, and people are seeking help for it.” She added that younger generations seem especially willing to open up about mental health struggles.
Brendel also stressed that depression has many different presentations, and that cultural norms and belief systems play a role in how people experience and express it. “Depression has many different presentations. The connection to cultural norms and belief systems is something that APA and others have been paying a lot more attention to in recent years,” Brendel said.
Some studies have examined how social support, coping strategies and resilience moderate the effects of COVID-19 stressors on mental health outcomes. Others have investigated how COVID-19 has exacerbated existing mental health inequalities among racial/ethnic and gender groups in the US. These studies suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for addressing depression during the pandemic, but rather a need for tailored interventions that take into account individual and contextual factors.