One in nine UK adults reported having very poor or deteriorating mental health during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers have reported.
Worse affected were people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods and individuals from ethnic minority groups, as well as those with pre-existing mental or physical conditions.
Writing in The Lancet Psychiatry, the researchers from the universities of Manchester, King’s College London, Cambridge, Swansea and City, say the two thirds of adults who were least affected were more likely to be older, white, and from the least deprived areas.
Men were most likely to have had consistently very good mental health mental health and were largely unaffected by the pandemic.
The researchers analysed monthly surveys from the UK Household Longitudinal Study from the University of Essex and the Economic and Social Research Council between April and October 2020. They were completed by 19,763 adults to identify typical patterns of change in mental health.
The team found that 12% were in a group that experienced initial mental health declines at the beginning of the pandemic before recovering over the summer. Women and parents of school-aged children were particularly likely to be in this group.
However, 7% of the sample said they had experienced a sustained decline in their mental health, while 4% reported mental health that was consistently very poor.
The researchers also found having been Covid-19 positive, having a local lockdown and experiencing financial difficulties all predicted a subsequent deterioration in mental health.
Lead author Dr Matthias Pierce, research fellow from the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at The University of Manchester, said: “It’s clear from this study that in terms of mental health, the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on minority ethnic groups, those living in deprived areas, others experiencing financial difficulties and those who already had poorer mental health.
“But also, we find a large proportion of the population has remained resilient to the effects of the pandemic.”
Senior author Professor Kathryn Abel from The University of Manchester said the experiences of people from ethnic minority groups has meant dealing with existing discrimination and inequalities as well as higher risks of severe illness, disability and death.
“This represents a devastating landscape for their mental health borne out in our findings,” she said. “We must respond by making sure services are aware of these disparities and that their offerings are culturally sensitive and appropriate for the complexity of unmet need.”
The authors say the data they used are superior to other surveys because the UK Household Longitudinal Study uses a high quality representative random sample and includes groups such as the digitally excluded who might not otherwise participate.
Different mental health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: latent class trajectory analysis using longitudinal UK data. Lancet Psychiatry 7 May 2021
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