IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v31y2022i2p284-296.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of COVID‐19 lockdowns on mental health: Evidence from a quasi‐natural experiment in England and Scotland

Author

Listed:
  • Manuel Serrano‐Alarcón
  • Alexander Kentikelenis
  • Martin Mckee
  • David Stuckler

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has been associated with worsening mental health but it is unclear whether this is a direct consequence of containment measures, like “Stay at Home” orders, or due to other considerations, such as fear and uncertainty about becoming infected. It is also unclear how responsive mental health is to a changing situation. Exploiting the different policy responses to COVID‐19 in England and Scotland and using a difference‐in‐difference analysis, we show that easing lockdown measures rapidly improves mental health. The results were driven by individuals with lower socioeconomic position, in terms of education or financial situation, who benefited more from the end of the strict lockdown, whereas they suffered a larger decline in mental health where the lockdown was extended. Overall, mental health appears to be more sensitive to the imposition of containment policies than to the evolution of the pandemic itself. As lockdown measures may continue to be necessary in the future, further efforts (both financial and mental health support) are required to minimize the consequences of COVID‐19 containment policies for mental health.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Serrano‐Alarcón & Alexander Kentikelenis & Martin Mckee & David Stuckler, 2022. "Impact of COVID‐19 lockdowns on mental health: Evidence from a quasi‐natural experiment in England and Scotland," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(2), pages 284-296, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:31:y:2022:i:2:p:284-296
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.4453
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4453
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.4453?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    2. Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M Jones, 2021. "The first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its impact on socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress in the UK," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1668-1683, July.
    3. Maheswaran, Hendramoorthy & Kupek, Emil & Petrou, Stavros, 2015. "Self-reported health and socio-economic inequalities in England, 1996–2009: Repeated national cross-sectional study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 136, pages 135-146.
    4. Erin York Cornwell & Linda J. Waite, 2009. "Measuring Social Isolation Among Older Adults Using Multiple Indicators From the NSHAP Study," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 64(suppl_1), pages 38-46.
    5. Lynn, Peter, 2009. "Sample design for Understanding Society," Understanding Society Working Paper Series 2009-01, Understanding Society at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    6. Arendt, Florian & Markiewitz, Antonia & Mestas, Manina & Scherr, Sebastian, 2020. "COVID-19 pandemic, government responses, and public mental health: Investigating consequences through crisis hotline calls in two countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    7. James Banks & Xiaowei Xu, 2020. "The Mental Health Effects of the First Two Months of Lockdown during the COVID‐19 Pandemic in the UK," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 685-708, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rienzo, Cinzia, 2024. "Trick or treat? The Brexit effect on immigrants’ mental health in the United Kingdom," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    2. Quintana-Domeque, Climent & Zeng, Jingya, 2023. "COVID-19 and Mental Health: Natural Experiments of the Costs of Lockdowns," IZA Discussion Papers 16532, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bilgrami, A., 2023. "Working from home and mental health: before and during the COVID-19 pandemic," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 23/03, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Ying Cui & Yue Han, 2022. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health of Urban Residents—Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-17, December.
    5. Anderes, Marc & Pichler, Stefan, 2023. "Mental health effects of social distancing in Switzerland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    6. Costi, Chiara & Hollingsworth, Bruce & O'Sullivan, Vincent & Zucchelli, Eugenio, 2023. "Does caring for others affect our mental health? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 321(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Colella, Sara & Dufourt, Frédéric & Hildebrand, Vincent A. & Vivès, Rémi, 2023. "Mental health effects of COVID-19 lockdowns: A Twitter-based analysis," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    2. Burdett, Ashley & Etheridge, Ben & Spantig, Lisa, 2020. "Weather affects mobility but not mental well-being during lockdown," ISER Working Paper Series 2020-13, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    3. Wilson, Jessica & Demou, Evangelia & Kromydas, Theocharis, 2024. "COVID-19 lockdowns and working women's mental health: Does motherhood and size of workplace matter? A comparative analysis using understanding society," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).
    4. Xiaoying Gao & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2022. "The Covid‐19 pandemic and its impact on socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress in the United Kingdom: An update," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(5), pages 912-920, May.
    5. Chan, Ho Fai & Cheng, Zhiming & Mendolia, Silvia & Paloyo, Alfredo R. & Tani, Massimiliano & Proulx, Damon & Savage, David & Torgler, Benno, 2022. "Societal Movement Restrictions and Adverse Mental Health Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 15111, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Burdett, A. & Davillas, A. & Etheridge, B., 2021. "Weather, psychological wellbeing and mobility during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 21/03, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    7. Gao, Xiaoying & Davillas, Apostolos & Jones, Andrew M., 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Socioeconomic Inequality in Psychological Distress in the UK: An Update," IZA Discussion Papers 14790, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Lindley, Joanne & Rienzo, Cinzia, 2021. "The Effect of Repeated Lockdowns during the Covid-19 Pandemic on UK Mental Health Outcomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 977, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    9. Gaggero, Alessio & Fernández-Pérez, Ángel & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores, 2022. "Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on depression in older adults: A panel data analysis," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(9), pages 865-871.
    10. Belloni, Michele & Carrino, Ludovico & Meschi, Elena, 2022. "The impact of working conditions on mental health: Novel evidence from the UK," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    11. Laura Coroneo & Fabrizio Iacone, 2021. "Testing for equal predictive accuracy with strong dependence," Discussion Papers 21/03, Department of Economics, University of York.
    12. Etheridge, Ben & Spantig, Lisa, 2022. "The gender gap in mental well-being at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    13. Akay, Alpaslan, 2022. "The local and global mental health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    14. Costi, Chiara & Hollingsworth, Bruce & O'Sullivan, Vincent & Zucchelli, Eugenio, 2023. "Does caring for others affect our mental health? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 321(C).
    15. Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M Jones, 2021. "The first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its impact on socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress in the UK," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1668-1683, July.
    16. David W. Johnston & Claryn S. J. Kung & Michael A. Shields, 2021. "Who is resilient in a time of crisis? The importance of financial and non‐financial resources," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(12), pages 3051-3073, December.
    17. Madia, Joan E. & Moscone, Francesco & Nicodemo, Catia, 2023. "Studying informal care during the pandemic: mental health, gender and job status," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    18. C. Biliotti & F. J. Bargagli-Stoffi & N. Fraccaroli & M. Puliga & M. Riccaboni, 2022. "Breaking Down the Lockdown: The Causal Effects of Stay-At-Home Mandates on Uncertainty and Sentiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Papers 2212.01705, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    19. Mikel Bedayo & Gabriel Jiménez & José-Luis Peydró & Raquel Vegas, 2020. "Screening and Loan Origination Time: Lending Standards, Loan Defaults and Bank Failures," Working Papers 1215, Barcelona School of Economics.
    20. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:31:y:2022:i:2:p:284-296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.