REHOVOT, ISRAEL—August 9, 2021—During the six weeks between the end of the first Covid-19 outbreak in Israel and the beginning of the second one (late April to early June of 2020), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science initiated a study that sought to assess and understand the mental toll of the pandemic on the country’s adult population. The study included more than 12,000 responses from nearly 5,000 respondents to digital questionnaires.
While adults, particularly men, are at greater risk of developing serious illness from Covid-19, the study’s findings show that the pandemic hit women, young adults, and the unemployed the hardest in terms of increased mental distress. The research, published in Molecular Psychiatry, indicates that these groups more frequently developed both physiological and behavioral symptoms associated with mental distress – from an increase in heart rate to sleeping disorders. That said, despite the increased risk to certain groups in the Israeli population, the severity of mental distress among the respondents did not appear to be elevated in comparison to past measurements, and was even less severe than the levels of distress assessed during times of war and military operations.
In previous work, Prof. Alon Chen’s group – a joint research group involving the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Neurobiology and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany – focused mostly on the molecular and neurological aspects of stress and mental disorders. However, when the pandemic broke out, Prof. Chen and his group decided to recalculate their route. “It’s not every day that humanity faces a cataclysmic event such as a global pandemic,” says Prof. Chen. “Although the far-reaching health and economic aspects received most of our attention during the first few weeks of the pandemic, it was clear from the get-go that the pandemic itself, and the ensuing containment policies that included nationwide lockdowns, and social and physical isolation, would have a momentous impact on our overall emotional well-being.”
Questionnaires aimed at mapping how Covid-19 spread across Israel – developed by Prof. Eran Segal’s group in the Institute’s Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics – received much attention during those early weeks. Researchers from Prof. Chen’s group, led by Asaf Benjamin, Noa Eren, and Dr. Yael Kuperman, decided to join forces with Prof. Segal’s group, adding to the questionnaires an additional chapter that was developed in collaboration with Prof. Orit Nuttman-Shwartz from the School of Social Work at Sapir College and psychiatrist Dr. Maya Amitai from the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel. This new section was dedicated exclusively to the mental and emotional effects of the pandemic, using clinically validated instruments to assess anxiety- and depression-related emotional distress, symptoms, and coping strategies.
The association between the two components – the epidemiological questionnaire and the “mood” questionnaire – acted as a unique force multiplier that underlies the new study’s strongest features: a particularly large dataset together with an in-depth characterization of the respondents, including demographic aspects and employment, medical, emotional, and behavioral data. Another strong point of the study was that it assessed changes to the respondents’ moods not at the very beginning or at the peak of the outbreak, but rather over a period of six weeks, which enabled the researchers to couple between changes in pandemic dynamics and how they affected emotional well-being. Thus, for example, the study shows that changes in the number of new daily Covid-19 cases in Israel were reflected in reported mental distress – the larger the daily count, the greater the mental distress, and vice versa.
In addition to young adults, women, and the unemployed, other groups were found to be more susceptible to anxiety and depression. For example, respondents with immune system suppression; lung, heart, or kidney diseases; or hypertension reported elevated levels of general mental distress or greater fear of contracting the virus, and respondents with lung or heart diseases or hypertension further reported more symptoms associated with stress. These findings make sense, considering the higher medical risk for people suffering from preexisting conditions. Similarly, respondents who were quarantined, tested for Covid-19, or experienced symptoms associated with the virus reported significantly higher levels of worrying about contracting the virus.
On the other hand, respondents who continued to participate in social events and maintained a seemingly normal social life during the pandemic were less worried about contracting Covid-19 and were generally less distressed – even though they were supposedly at an increased risk of infection. Another interesting finding was respondents’ use of coping mechanisms to relieve mental distress: women, more than men, tended to seek emotional support from their peers, while older and elderly respondents coped with distress by exercising and practicing meditation.
A strong sense of belonging
Even after a year and a half of a global pandemic – with millions dead, a growing global recession, and lockdown, quarantine, and social distancing policies – we are still far from exposing the full emotional and behavioral impact of this new reality.
“Studies coming in from all around the world – from China to Australia – have only just begun to reveal the scope of the pandemic’s effect on mental health. However, at least in the beginning, these studies primarily focused on specific aspects of the initial outbreak or its effect on particular groups, such as medical teams. Our goal was to assess, as much as we could, the long-term effects of the pandemic on the mental health of the general public,” says graduate student Benjamin.
“Interestingly, we found out that many of the respondents were less concerned about the possibility of contracting the virus themselves or experiencing individual financial difficulties, but were rather more concerned about a loved one becoming infected or about how the pandemic was generally affecting society – in Israel and all over the world; these feelings were particularly prevalent among older individuals and respondents living in higher socioeconomic areas,” Dr. Kuperman adds. “Care for the other or the collective may imply a strong sense of belonging to a community or to the state. Similar non-self-centered concerns were reported at the beginning of the pandemic in the United States, as well as in Israel at times when the state was facing security threats.”
Study participants also included Hagai Rossman, Dr. Smadar Shilo, Ayya Keshet, and Tomer Meir, all from Prof. Segal’s group, and Dr. Ron Rotkopf of the Institute’s Life Sciences Core Facilities Department.
Prof. Alon Chen’s research is supported by the Ruhman Family Laboratory for Research in the Neurobiology of Stress; the Irving B. Harris Fund for New Directions in Brain Research; and Bruno Licht. He is the incumbent of the Vera and John Schwartz Professorial Chair in Neurobiology.