Covid and mental health in America

Blanchflower, D. G. and Bryson, A. (2022) Covid and mental health in America. PLoS ONE, 17(7), e0269855. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269855) (PMID:35867704) (PMCID:PMC9307159)

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Abstract

Using 44 sweeps of the US Census Household Pulse Survey data for the period April 2020 to April 22 we track the evolution of the mental health of just over three million Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find anxiety, depression and worry had two major peaks in 2020 but improved in 2021 and 2022. We show that a variable we construct based on daily inflows of COVID cases by county, aggregated up to state, is positively associated with worse mental health, having conditioned on state fixed effects and seasonality in mental health. However, the size of the effect declines in 2021 and 2022 as vaccination rates rise. For women and college educated men having a vaccine improved mental health. However, being vaccinated worsens mental health among less educated men.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Blanchflower, Professor David
Creator Roles:
Blanchflower, D. G.Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing
Authors: Blanchflower, D. G., and Bryson, A.
College/School:College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Economics
Journal Name:PLoS ONE
Publisher:Public Library of Science
ISSN:1932-6203
ISSN (Online):1932-6203
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2022 Blanchflower, Bryson
First Published:First published in PLoS ONE 17(7): e0269855
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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