No real mental health crisis from pandemic

[Nimbostratus100]

Confirmed by BMJ, after surveys across high income countries across Europe and ASia

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, despite a myriad of anecdotal accounts on MN and in some other places.

I know I asked many hundreds of children myself, and found more enjoyed and benefited from lockdown than suffered because of it, and mental health charities knew at the time that suicide rates were falling, which has later been confirmed.

Some people's mental health deteriorated in the lockdowns. Some people's improved. Overall, there was a small rise in mild/moderate mental health problems being reported, while suicides decreased.

Can we stop blaming the pandemic and lockdown for poor mental health across the board now, but particularly in schools.

Was this line of thought to make you feel better about supporting lockdown?

Have the lockdown files in The Telegraph given you an attack of conscience and now you feel somehow you must justify it by saying that in your personal experience of a very narrow portion of society some children enjoyed lockdown more than others?

Someone on the radio the other day, said that the children "would never recover", and he meant in their whole lives. Fucking drama llama. As if they will still be affected 20 years from now. Eye roll!

God it was just awful on many levels and we were fortunate NOT to have money or job worries. And we had a garden and space in our house. But seeing DD isolated from all her friends and family, with us trying to home school and work at the same time - bloody horrible time. I have never worked so many 14 hour days on a repeat basis in my life. Despite our very best efforts our happy cheerful little girl became so lonely and miserable. Even the school closing for a strike is enough to trigger the anxiety again.

DS enjoyed being at home because he is socially anxious and a real introvert. However, he missed out on crucial experiences which he's still playing catch-up on now.

Big garden, enough money, tents, hot tubs - no doubt lockdown was more than bearable. For many people it was very difficult indeed.

I wonder if these findings are going to be used to justify the abysmal state of publicly-funded mental health services.?

I think that those who don't have school-age children and don't work in health or education probably had a wildly different experience of lockdown to those that do.

What about the elderly?
There must be 100’s of people like my dad who really suffered due to isolation and loneliness and because of the difficulty of accessing gp’s even now nobody knows the true extent.
I have begged my dad’s gp to do a wellness chk on him. They’re not interested.

It doesn't show much of anything!
Except some men who already had mh symptoms didn't appear to have worse mh by the end of lock downs

This is what I thought it was showing.

Limited time period - early lockdowns mainly.

Finds impact of group making up over 50% of the population - but reporting overlooks this.

Doesn't cover children.

DH Uncle who was living by himself during first lockdowns developed mental health issue first time in his life - it's not clear if he'd be in there. FIL recently developed mental health problems needing medication and support party in response to experienced of poor health and health care but also loss of social contact/groups they never quite came back in same way.

For the rest of us - we could do early lockdowns it was how long it went on - later on relationship breakdowns DV, job losses, impacts on education and health services have been huge and impacted all of us.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying OP, it doesn't seem to make any sense. You can't level out mental health across the board. Even if more people's MH benefited from lockdown, there's still an issue for those people whose MH deteriorated.

It is only anecdotal, but I have found social ties have increased. It is like people have realised the importance of strong social ties. But I am not middle class and our family have a low income, so it may be a very different experience for those who are better off financially.
The cost of living crisis is having a negative impact on our family, but someone we know set up a whatsupp group to share free things or very cheap things that are happening. There are a lot of things I would never have known about. It has directly led to people in the whatsupp group organising going places free together. And people offer lifts to those who can't afford the bus or for who it is too far to walk.

The study the OP references didn’t look at children. Why is the OP talking about children’s MH when the study excluded them?

"Women were the only specific group to fare worse".

Women are nearly 50% of the population.

It also excluded anyone with previous MH problems from what I can see.

if MH problems balanced out for adults previously in general good MH then I suppose that can be considered good news, maybe? But I’m not sure the OP can claim this bit from this particular study: “Can we stop blaming the pandemic and lockdown for poor mental health across the board now, but particularly in schools.”

Sorry, I missed @ErrolTheDragon 's post making the same point.

It is only anecdotal, but I have found social ties have increased. It is like people have realised the importance of strong social ties. But I am not middle class and our family have a low income, so it may be a very different experience for those who are better off financially.

It well may be age related - our family is working class but fewer social contacts seem to be affecting older relatives.

They didn’t read it and can’t reassess or backtrack

I haven’t read the whole thread but I’ll just add my 2p in as I’m not sure if anyone else has mentioned it. But this is what I’m seeing in my daily practice, and I think there’s probably a few parents on here who will relate to this.

For many neurodiverse children, and/or children with trauma / anxiety struggles, lockdown was a real eye opener to how life can be. Many of these children were happy to be at home where they didn’t have to mask and cope with the stressful sensory school environment every day. At home they could wear their comfies, eat when they want, move when they want, break up their learning (or maybe not do much learning at all), have breaks, meet their own sensory needs in the way that feels truthful and comforting. Maybe their house was quiet, maybe they were out walking miles regularly because there was nothing else to do, maybe they had lots of lovely calm and comforting moments with family members who had the time because they were furloughed.

Then, having experienced all that. They were expected to go back to school. To share their environments with others, to cope with the intense and uncertain sensory environments again. Be told what to wear, how to sit, not to move, told off for trying to meet their sensory needs, too noisy, too smelly, too much. Lockdown meant they were out of practice on coping in those environments, and it was overload to many. Overload causes a stress response in the body, similar to anxiety. Children start to become fearful of the school environment for how it impacts their sensory modulation. There’s no direct support for these children other than place them on a waiting list for months/years. Camhs say it’s a neurodiverse need, yet many areas are not funded to provide sensory support within schools. Unless you’ve got a really good SENDCo a lot of schools simply don’t understand sensory. Sensory directly impacts mental health.

I would be interested to see future studies explore how many people, following lockdown, have discovered that they now find it extremely difficult to tolerate certain sensory experiences like they used to eg; busy environments, working in a noisy office, commuting on public transport, shopping.

We all masked and coped for so long prior to lockdown (we being people who are more over responsive to sensory stimulus then those who are under responsive) that now the world is pretty much “back to normal” we question how we used to cope with daily life back then. It all very much feels MORE overwhelming.
Thats my opinion anyways.

@eirlaw I am in my late fifties.
I do worry about some people though who have only partially come out of lockdown. An old friend I reconnected with won't go anywhere crowded even now. But she is older and retired. I think anyone working was forced to go to crowded places and you soon get used to it.

I'd struggle to believe that it was good for most young people. Perhaps for much younger children ('Kinder' age in other countries), the extra bonding time with family was positive.

DC2 suffered a vicious bullying attack two years ago that school believed to be the result of pent-up frustrations for some youngsters, with no outlet during the lockdowns.

DC2 enjoyed the lockdown because the learning experience of the first term and a half was woeful (the school set piles of homework with no teaching involved), so it really felt like a very extended holiday period.

As someone with some sensory issues and now wfh I find it much easier. I no longer have to cope with an open plan office or wear trousers that are less comfy. Now I wear a smartish top for zoom and comfy joggers on bottom.

On the other hand, lockdown was never an end in itself. It was to prevent the misery of an unknowably greater number of deaths in the context of a pandemic of a disease about which we had limited information.

It is likely that more people would have died in their several thousands of covid if we hadn't locked down.

And all of that would in itself have had a huge impact on health services. Workers were being pulled from mental health to covid wards as it was, you know. Services could not have carried on merrily regardless.

So the mental health consequences of not locking down would have been terrible for some people. Perhaps differently terrible, perhaps for different people.

And we certainly might need some measures to be taken in the future to prevent spread of infection if we have another pandemic of a new pathogen. My hunch is that a future government would be looking to lockdown more effectively, which might mean taking action sooner, now that they know what has been possible with covid.

I would hope that they will be doing some planning to take all the pros and cons into account.

I would especially hope, regarding young people, that they will do everything they can to leave external exams in place, as the whole business around getting qualifications and progressing to uni looks to have been a nightmare for them.

But pubmed links do tend to show measurable outcomes.

This is a meta analysis in which, per their own notes:
Only 27% of the included studies were representative of the wider population
They excluded people with existing mental illness
They looked at feelings as opposed to measurable outcomes, which is fundamentally less robust

If a pubmed link showed that people across the UK 'felt' they stayed the same weight and had a balanced diet through lockdown, but then it was shown to exclude overweight people and overindex in the wealthy AND NHS statistics said that there was a doubling in number of patients qualifying as obese, and the the number of e.g. diabetic foot amputations, or people needing obesity-related knee replacements went up by 300% (which was the increase in Sertraline prescriptions post lockdown), then I'd also be sceptical of the initial survey.

For you perhaps. Loads of benefits for many people.

Disingenuous!

This is from the conclusion of the BMJ study:

"There were few robust studies with vulnerable groups, however, and it is possible that some population groups experience mental health issues that differ from those of the general population or from other groups. The pandemic and the long term ramifications continue to affect societies across the world, and it will be important to continue to assess mental health. The pandemic has affected the lives of many people, and some are now experiencing mental health difficulties for the first time. Governments should continue to ensure that mental health supports are available and respond to population needs. We will update the results of this systematic review as more evidence accrues, with study results posted online..."

So, not only were vulnerable groups excluded from the analysis of the data, but they admit effects will continue to be felt for years to come.

It's a flawed study with important caveats. And not the final word on the impact of lockdown....

Yep. Definitely benefitted me. Working from home, saved lots of money, had a lovely time with my family and my kid loved it as well

I think some probably did enjoy it.

They’re free to recreate it at will, if they miss it.

Just not at the expense of the greater proportion of society this time tg

@OutOfChocolate family members I'm think of were all retried before covid and very much enjoying life and groups, regular nights out haven't come back and aren't the same. They are all out of lockdown but their peers died health got worse or are still doing much less and newer people haven't been joining the groups because they were shut down for so long.

School and work did pull us back to normal routines which probably has helped us.