Europe UK (Commonwealth Union) – The pandemic lockdowns had many lasting effects on the public with a complete rearrangement of individuals everyday lives and the inability to engage in simple daily activities such as catching up with friends or visiting a gym.
A recent peer-reviewed study appearing in Psychological Medicine has revealed that generational inequalities in mental health broadened during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.
The study featured data from 26,772 persons that were in 5 national longitudinal studies, the study noted that during the early days of the pandemic, core symptoms of depression among adults in their late teens and early twenties were more heavily impacted than assumed even after controlling for pre-existing generational variations in mental health, indicating a rapid increase in these inequalities.
The research is led by the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London along with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London.
Dr Darío Moreno-Agostino, lead author says “To illustrate the extent of that mismatch, if we assumed that younger generations were going to have consistently worse mental health levels, the average depressive symptomatology levels we observed in the youngest generation, born in 2000-2002, would not have been expected until around 22 years later.”
Dr. Moreno-Agostino also indicated that prior evidence had indicated that age differences exist in mental health and they expected them in the results. He indicated however that they discovered that depressive symptomatology levels in the youngest generation was greatly more impacted than was meant to be, if the generational gaps stayed similar to pre-pandemic times.
The researchers further explored other factors that could describe these differences, such as measures of health and socioeconomic position, and psychological distress as well as life satisfaction gathered prior to the onset of the pandemic.
The findings of the study emphasized the continuous relevance of moves to support the mental health for the most vulnerable groups in the population.
