Exploring the Longitudinal Relationship Between Lockdown Policy Stringency and Public Negative Emotions Among 120 Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mediating Role of Population Mobility

The interplay among individuals' distress, daily activities, and perceptions of COVID-19 and neighborhood cohesion: A study using network analysis

The reduction of social interactions through non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) has been shown to effectively curb COVID-19 transmission. However, these control measures were often accompanied by changes in people's daily routines and constraints on their activity space, which could lead to mental distress (i.e., anxiety and depression). This study examined the interplay among individuals' anxiety, depression, daily activities, and perceptions of COVID-19 and neighborhood cohesion. Taking Hong Kong as an example, an online survey (N = 376) was conducted to collect data from participants between March 14 to May 11, 2022. The data include respondents' self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms, daily activities (e.g., smartphone use), perceptions of COVID-19 (e.g., the possibility of infecting COVID-19), and perceptions of neighborhood cohesion. Using network analysis, we found that excessive smartphone use, life disturbance by COVID-19, and a community with people getting along well with each other were significant factors associated with participants' anxiety and depression. Using critical path analysis, we observed that NPIs reduced human mobility, led to delayed bedtime, and increased smartphone use, which were associated with participants' mental distress. We also found that NPIs and COVID-19 were associated with people's perceptions of infection and the severity of COVID-19 and human mobility flexibility, which may further lead to mental distress. Our results also demonstrated that people with high education levels were vulnerable. These results provided important insights for designing appropriate interventions without generating deleterious impacts on people's mental health in the future.

Quantifying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical trial screening rates over time in 37 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented and disruptive impact on people's health and lives worldwide. In addition to burdening people's health in the short-term in the form of infection, illness, and mortality, there has been an enormous negative impact on clinical research. Clinical trials experienced challenges in ensuring patient safety and enrolling new patients throughout the pandemic. Here, we investigate and quantify the negative impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has industry-sponsored clinical trials, both in the USA and worldwide. We find a negative correlation between the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and clinical trial screening rate, with the relationship being strongest during the first three months of the pandemic compared to the entire duration of the pandemic. This negative statistical relationship holds across therapeutic areas, across states in the USA despite the heterogeneity of responses at the state-level, and across countries. This work has significant implications for the management of clinical trials worldwide in response to the fluctuating severity of COVID-19 moving forward and for future pandemics.

Psychological distress and caregiving experience during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic among parents of an offspring with anorexia nervosa

OBJECTIVE

To compare different aspects of caregiving distress and experience in parents of patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

Three cohorts of parents of AN patients (cohort 1-pre-pandemic: N = 78, cohort 2-first pandemic year: N = 51, cohort 3-second pandemic year: N = 119) were recruited from child and adolescent psychiatry wards and cross-sectionally assessed as part of the clinical routine. Quantitative measures of psychological distress, psychopathology, eating disorder (ED)-related burden, expressed emotion and caregiver skills were obtained at the beginning of the child's inpatient or outpatient treatment.

RESULTS

Cohort 2 showed lower levels of anxiety and a tendency of lower emotional overinvolvement and higher caregiving skills compared to the pre-pandemic cohort. In contrast, the levels of general psychological distress, depression, ED-related burden and criticism observed in cohort 3 significantly exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The prevalence of clinically relevant depression was higher in cohort 3 (41.5%) compared to cohorts 1 (24.4%) and 2 (21.6%).

DISCUSSION

The pandemic effects on parents seem to be time-specific. Lower distress in the early phase of the pandemic may be associated with improvements in parent-child-relationships reported in previous studies. However, the pandemic may has negative consequences in the long-term emphasising the need of ongoing parental support.