Early pandemic led to significant rise in depression and anxiety
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Depression and anxiety levels rose significantly during the earlier part of the pandemic here, according to a major upcoming public health survey.
The survey, which will be published in the coming weeks, captured the view of almost 1,000 people at three different points in the pandemic and was a collaborative effort between the national Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF), the School of Public Health at University College Cork, and others, with polling carried out by Ipsos MRBI.
Professor Ella Arensman of the NSRF said that it has captured the views of different groups of people, with approximately 950 individuals surveyed on each occasion and in a way to capture a cross-section of society, last May, June and September.
Another round of information-gathering is already underway.
Prof Arensman, who was recently appointed as the country's first Professor of Public Mental Health, at UCC, said the findings of the surveys could help plan for the longer-term mental health impacts of the Covid-19 emergency.
Prof Arensman said: "Overall when we look at the findings of the three waves, both in June and September levels of depression and anxiety symptoms were elevated compared to other population samples outside the Covid pandemic, so there was definitely increased symptoms of depression and anxiety."
Already this week the NSRF published new data which showed no significant increase in the number of suicides in Co Cork last year compared with that in 2019, although Prof Arensman said annual figures can fluctuate and that researchers preferred to take three-year averages when it came to discerning trends.
The NSRF's Self-Harm Observatory also found that the number of presentations to 18 different hospitals around the country as a result of self-harm incidents also fell last year, with a slight fall in the overall rate between January and October compared with the same periods in the previous two years, and driven by 11% decreases in March and October 2020, when fresh lockdowns were put in place.
Prof Arensman said that while extreme incidents such as self-harming and suicides did not appear to have increased across last year, that did not mean that the pandemic was not having a significant mental health impact on individuals and on the public generally and that past experience indicated a greater risk of difficulties after "peak three" of any epidemic.
"There have been only a few high-quality studies on mental health and suicides on previous epidemics or pandemics, but if there were significant impacts it was in the longer term, after peak three of the virus, so it wasn't really immediate," she said.
"What we also must take into account, if you look at health workers and other professionals dealing with prevention of covid — as long as they are in the system they continue [working], but what about when they are out of this and reflecting on this? Some haven't even had time to process that."
She also referred to "the need for mental health supports and addressing long term impacts and for people who have not been able to put in place the required rituals, those who lost a family member from Covid or could not get certain treatments, the limitations to grieve and all of that."
Recently-published international data also indicated no significant rise in suicide rates among higher-income countries in the earlier part of the pandemic, and Prof Arensman said that even when people highlight shortcomings in mental health services in Ireland, many services were still able to switch to tele-medicine or other forms of contact which were not available in other countries.
She said there was a "greater range of mitigating factors" here, including helplines, that also needed to be reviewed and appreciated.
"What if these helplines weren't there? The purpose of these helplines is to help and they [callers] may be able to obtain some relief and refrain from self-harm and suicide."
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