Heterogeneity in depressive and anxiety symptoms and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from three Dutch psychiatric case-control cohorts from April 2020 to February 2022.
J Psychosom Res
; 165: 111138, 2023 02.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2165631
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
While research found heterogeneous changes in mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, less is known about the long-term changes in mental health in psychiatric groups. Therefore, we applied a data-driven method to detect sub-groups with distinct trajectories across two years into the pandemic in psychiatric groups, and described their differences in socio-demographic and clinical characteristics.METHOD:
We conducted sixteen rounds of questionnaires between April 2020 and February 2022 among participants (n = 1722) of three psychiatric case-control cohorts that started in the 2000's. We used Growth Mixture Modelling and (multinomial) logistic regression to identify characteristics associated with trajectory membership.RESULTS:
We found low decreasing (1228 [72%] participants), intermediate (n = 348 [22%] participants) and high stable (106 [6%] participants) trajectories of depressive symptoms; decreasing low/intermediate (1507 [90%] participants) and high stable (161 [10%] participants) trajectories of anxiety symptoms; and stable low (1109 [61%] participants), stable high (315 [17%] participants), temporary lowered (123 [9%]) and temporary heightened (175 [13%] participants) trajectories of loneliness. Chronicity and severity of pre-pandemic mental disorders predicted unfavourable sub-group membership for all outcomes. Being female, having a low education and income level were associated with unfavourable trajectories of depression, being younger with unfavourable trajectories of anxiety and being female and living alone with unfavourable trajectories of loneliness.CONCLUSION:
We found relatively stable trajectories of depression and anxiety symptoms over two years, suggesting low heterogeneity in outcomes during the pandemic. For loneliness, we found two specific sub-groups with temporary increase and decrease in loneliness during the pandemic.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
English
Journal:
J Psychosom Res
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
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