Psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are heterogeneous but have stabilised over time: One year longitudinal follow-up of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) Study (preprint)

ABSTRACT

Shevlin et al. (2021) recently demonstrated heterogeneity in mental health and psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic over time from a nationally representative sample of UK adults (March–July 2020). Five subpopulations representing either stability, deterioration or improvement in both anxiety-depression and COVID-19 PTSD were identified. The majority of the sample were characterised by low levels of anxiety-depression (56.6%) and COVID-19 traumatic stress (68.3%) during this early phase of the pandemic but some showed deterioration and some showed mental health benefits. Here we extend these findings using two additional survey waves from the C19PRC Study, thereby modelling mental health trajectories for the UK population within the entire first year of the pandemic.