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Hello everyone, welcome in Brain New, your podcast dealing with psychology. Today we are going to speak about the health crisis of COVID-19, and more specifically about the potential mental health consequences of lockdown and how to deal with them. First of all, in this podcast, we will discuss the psychological and physiological consequences related to lockdown. Then I will present a french survey on the psychological impact of lockdown due to COVID-19 from the book “Covid-19 and psychological distress” written by Nicolas Franck, a psychiatrist. And at the end, we will study the different strategies for reducing the impact of stress and how to deal with lockdown.
In the current health crisis, many people have lost their bearings. The organization of their daily life and all their personal or professional objectives have been disrupted, leading to a period of intense and prolonged stress. The experience of separation from loved ones, the loss of freedom, the uncertainty about this situation and about possible contamination can have very severe consequences on humans.
Stress can be defined according to Selye as the set of physiological reactions that enables people to adapt to a new context. It is a common reaction of the organism, however, when it is long-term it becomes deleterious to the brain, and is the cause of an alteration in cognitive functions. In particular, it has consequences on attention, memory, learning and behavioural flexibility. In addition, this chronic stress can promote the development of various illnesses and have a negative impact on mental health. Stress that is too intense for what an individual is capable of enduring can lead to the appearance or aggravation of a mental disorder such as an anxiety or depressive disorder.
Several factors contributed to the increasment of stress during lockdown. Some of the most stressful factors include financial loss, reduced contact and leisure time, length of lockdown, fear of contamination, frustration, boredom, lack of information, lack of basic necessities, and stigma. These negative consequences will have a deleterious impact on mental health and mental well-being. There are two dimensions regarding the notion of mental well-being: The hedonic dimension, i.e. the subjective experience of happiness and life satisfaction, and the eudemonic dimension relates to psychological functioning and self-actualization. A degradation of this well-being can be at the origin of the appearance of disorders, it is thus important to identify the first stages of fragility of this well-being.
Now, I will present a French survey that looked at the impact of lockdown on mental well-being during the COVID-19 epidemic. This investigation remained open throughout the duration of lockdown. However, data collected only concern the second week of lockdown. 11,140 participants residing in France responded to the questionnaire. During this survey several data were collected including various information about the participants and their lifestyle as well as a mental well-being score. In this study, mental well-being is considered as the main criterion of mental health. This score was obtained using the Mental Well-being Scale called WEMWBS. The purpose of this study is to describe changes in participants’ behaviour during this period of lockdown. Linking the different variables to the WEMWBS score allowed a better understanding of the factors that can influence mental health during this period of lockdown.
The results of this study has shown that lockdown had altered the well-being of the French population. Indeed, we can observe that the average well-being score decreased continuously over the weeks. Students, people with disabilities and those living in more modest conditions were the most affected. One of the consequences of this deterioration in mental well-being has been an increase in the anxiety of the population. In addition, this alteration was associated with a change in the population’s consumption, with an increase in the use of screens, caloric foods and toxic substances.
To conclude, we have seen that lockdown has a psychological impact. The impact on mental health will be worse if the lock down continues for a long time. The stress due to this period of uncertainty can reveal a previously unseen fragility. It is therefore crucial to promote strategies to deal with this health crisis and reduce the impact of stress. Among these strategies, we find the daily organization, the preservation of biological rhythms, as well as the maintenance of regular physical activity and social contact. Mental health must therefore be taken into account at the same level as the economic impact in the management of a future epidemic.
It was Pauline Guilbaud for Brain New, thank you for listening.