When Depression Rates Triple

HEALTH

 

As the coronavirus pandemic has swept across America, so has a plague of depression, a replacement study shows.

Since the pandemic began, the prevalence of depression symptoms has roughly tripled, with the poor who lost jobs and savings most affected, and on the other hand, most of these people are suffering from a bad situation. researchers report.

"People with lower income were twice as likely to possess depression and other people with an equivalent income but who had fewer savings were 1.5 times more likely to possess depression," said lead researcher Catherine Eltman, director of strategic development at Boston University's School of Public Health.

"We were surprised at the high levels of depression, also that called to the pandemic situation. “These rates were above what we have seen within the general population after other large-scale traumas like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina."

The current pandemic is not just one event. With COVID there's fear, anxiety and dramatic economic consequences, especially among people with fewer resources, Eltman said.

"This involves us listening to psychological state problems that are arising at this moment which will need attention within the coming months and years," she said.

For the study, the researchers used a survey of quite 1,400 people aged 18 and over who completed the COVID-19 and Life Stressors Impact on psychological state and Well-Being survey, conducted March 31 to April 13.

That data was then compared with data on quite 7,000 people that took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2018 to 2019.

Since the pandemic, 30% of responders reported being mildly depressed, compared with 20% before the pandemic. Fifteen percent were moderately depressed, compared with 6% before the pandemic.

There were 8% with moderately severe depression, compared with 2% before COVID-19 and 5% with severe depression, compared with but 1% before COVID-19.

The risk for depression symptoms was highest among people with less than $5,000 in savings, the researchers found.

Eltman believes that additionally to more access to psychological state care, programs that keep people's heads above water economically are needed to make sure that they need the resources to weather through these times.

These can include moratoriums on evictions, extended social insurance, and universal access to healthcare.

The report was published online Sept. 2 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

One expert not involved the study thinks that the rates of depression tied to COVID-19 could also be even higher now than they were in March and April.

"I would anticipate that it's even more, but there is no way of knowing needless to say," said Dr. Saklyan Russel, associate director of the division of kid and adolescent psychiatry at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York.

Dicker also thinks that added to the strain of the pandemic is that the worry parents have about sending their children to high school.

 

Stress and depression, especially among those hardest hit economically, are going to last for a long time, he said.

 

"I do not believe that these symptoms are getting to getaway soon. The pandemic is with us, the unknown is with us," Dicker said. "The economic and social crisis is with us. So, I feel it's premature to anticipate that these are short-lived."

People who are feeling depressed shouldn't ignore these feelings, Russel said.

 

"The very first thing is to remember and hospitable the very fact that they might have an emotional reaction to COVID," he said.

 

"Talking with members of their family, perhaps their medical care physician, perhaps their clergy, to actually more fully get a way of the degree of their depressive symptoms," Dicker said. "And then, beyond that, having more formal evaluations, and maybe addressing depression in individual or group therapy ."