Using the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), a popular measure of mental health, we found that the first pandemic wave led to a statistically significant average deterioration in mental health. Moreover, the impact was worse among women, migrants, people in BAME groups, and the young. Digging further into other moderating factors, reporting financial distress or loneliness, as well as those living in overcrowded homes, suffered a greater mental health middle east rcs data fallout. Since the GHQ-12 does not have an intuitive measurement scale, we compared these impacts to those of other life shocks documented in the literature and we noted, for instance, that the average mental health impact among the population is equivalent to a sizable share of the estimated disutility associated with unemployment. Likewise, the average mental health impact is significantly greater than the estimated mental health toll from divorce or widowhood.
We followed up our work by looking into the moderating role of neighbourhood and outdoor dwelling characteristics such as private or shared garden, rooftop, terrace or balcony. This time we merged the UKLHS with two datasets containing information from so-called lower-level super output areas (LSOA) in England and Wales in order to match individuals in the UKLHS with levels of deprivation over several wellbeing dimensions (e.g., income, education, health, etc.) in their place of residence. Likewise, we related these same individuals to average proximities to bodies of water (“blue areas”) and green areas from their place of residence. Among several interesting results, we found that the mental health toll from the first pandemic wave was worse among people living in more socially and economically deprived neighbourhoods. We also found a statistically significant impact of “blue” but not green areas (whereby people nearer bodies of water suffered less mentally).