For months, experts have warned about the prospect of an entirely different threat unleashed by the coronavirus: a mental health crisis that could sweep the country.
Their concerns are rooted in more than a year of social isolation, grief and loss, and economic and emotional trauma that the pandemic has inflicted. A new survey conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan is shedding light on which groups might be most vulnerable to the effects.
Four groups — women, people ages 50 to 64, people with higher levels of education, and individuals in either fair or poor physical health — “are more likely to have experienced worsened mental health during the first nine months of the pandemic,” or to have felt heightened anxiety or sleep problems, researchers found.