When public health crises become entwined: How trends in COVID-19, deaths of despair, and well-being track across the United States

COVID-19 landed in a United States that is deeply divided in opportunity, health, and hope;a reality that is manifest in the million lives lost to deaths of despair in the past decade. We explore the places and populations most vulnerable to COVID and where they coincide with vulnerability to despair deaths. We use well-being metrics to explore spillover effects from the confluence of COVID and despair. Our earlier research finds that metrics like lack of hope and worry track with mortality patterns, with minorities more optimistic and less likely to die of despair deaths than whites. Using EMS first responder data, we compare trends in 2020 with those in 2018 to 2019, assessing excess deaths of despair and new survey data to explore changes in well-being. Remarkably, the cohorts with the highest COVID death rates-low-income Blacks-still report more optimism than other cohorts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Coping with COVID-19: Differences in hope, resilience, and mental well-being across U.S. racial groups.

OBJECTIVES: To explore if the COVID-19 pandemic revealed differences across racial groups in coping, resilience, and optimism, all of which have implications for health and mental well-being. METHODS: We collect data obtained from four rounds of a national sample of 5,000 US survey respondents in each round from April 2020 to February 2021. Using logistic regression and fixed effects models, we estimate the pandemic impacts on COVID-19 related concerns, social distancing behaviors, and mental health/life satisfaction and optimism for racial/income groups. RESULTS: Despite extreme income and health disparities before and during the COVID-19 outbreak, Blacks and Hispanics remain more resilient and optimistic than their White counterparts. Moreover, the greatest difference in resilience, optimism and better mental health-is found between poor Blacks and poor Whites, a difference that persists through all four rounds. CONCLUSIONS: These deep differences in resilience have implications for the long-term mental health of different population groups in the face of an unprecedented pandemic. Better understanding these dynamics may provide lessons on how to preserve mental health in the face of public health and other large-scale crises.

When Public Health Crises Become Entwined: How Trends in COVID-19, Deaths of Despair, and Well-Being Track across the United States

COVID-19 landed in a United States that is deeply divided in opportunity, health, and hope;a reality that is manifest in the million lives lost to deaths of despair in the past decade. We explore the places and populations most vulnerable to COVID and where they coincide with vulnerability to despair deaths. We use well-being metrics to explore spillover effects from the confluence of COVID and despair. Our earlier research finds that metrics like lack of hope and worry track with mortality patterns, with minorities more optimistic and less likely to die of despair deaths than whites. Using EMS first responder data, we compare trends in 2020 with those in 2018 to 2019, assessing excess deaths of despair and new survey data to explore changes in well-being. Remarkably, the cohorts with the highest COVID death rates—low-income Blacks—still report more optimism than other cohorts.

The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: a Critique.

A number of studies-including our own-find a mid-life dip in well-being. Yet several papers in the psychology literature claim that the evidence of a U-shape is "overblown" and if there is such a thing that any such decline is "trivial". Others have claimed that the evidence of a U-shape "is not as robust and generalizable as is often assumed," or simply "wrong." We identify 409 studies, mostly published in peer reviewed journals that find U-shapes that these researchers apparently were unaware of. We use data for Europe from the Eurobarometer Surveys (EB), 1980-2019; the Gallup World Poll (GWP), 2005-2019 and the UK's Annual Population Survey, 2016-2019 and the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey of August 2021, to examine U-shapes in age in well-being. We find remarkably strong and consistent evidence across countries of statistically significant and non-trivial U-shapes in age with and without socio-economic controls. We show that studies cited by psychologists claiming there are no U-shapes are in error; we reexamine their data and find differently. The effects of the mid-life dip we find are comparable to major life events such as losing a spouse or becoming unemployed. This decline is comparable to half of the unprecedented fall in well-being observed in the UK in 2020 and 2021, during the Covid19 pandemic and lockdown, which is hardly "inconsequential" as claimed.

The U Shape of Happiness: A Response.

We write in response to an article published in this journal, "The U Shape of Happiness Across the Life Course: Expanding the Discussion," by Galambos, Krahn, Johnson and Lachman. The authors claim that "support for the purported U shape is not as robust and generalizable as is often assumed" and "we believe the conclusion that happiness declines from late adolescence to midlife (the first half of the U shape) is premature, and possibly wrong." We respectfully disagree. The authors' main evidence is based on summaries of 33 articles; they find 12 to have U shapes, seven to have none, and 14 to be mixed. We found that most of these articles are misclassified: Four of them are ineligible for inclusion, 25 find a U, and four are mixed. We then identified a further 353 articles, including 329 in peer-reviewed journals, that all found U shapes that were not identified in the literature review. This is a major omission. We also present our own evidence of midlife nadirs in well-being using around eight and a half million individual observations from nationally representative surveys for the United States and Europe. The midlife low occurs in the mid-40s and its drop is equivalent to roughly three quarters of the unprecedented drop observed in well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Building brain capital.

Brains are indispensable drivers of human progress. Why not invest more heavily in them? We seek to place Brain Capital at the center of a new narrative to fuel economic and societal recovery and resilience.