How to Measure the Impact of Pandemics on Mental Health

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The paper was written by two economists who were serving on a government advisory board about covid. They looked for ways to monitor, in real time as possible, the impact of any government interventions that might come along. So they pooled together eight million different ah calls from from these different help lines and analyzed why people were calling. It's quite an amorphous topic that's hard to talk about from a kind of a data perspective, a datea driven perspective.

Studying mental health in populations is not a simple task, but as the pandemic has continued, mounting concerns have mobilised researchers.

Now, researchers have used data from helplines in 20 countries to assess the impacts that COVID, as well as associated political and public health measures like financial assistance programs and lockdowns, have had on mental health. Contrary to expectations, loneliness and concerns about the impacts of the pandemic drove most of the callers, rather than imminent threats such as suicidal thoughts or abuse.

News: Millions of helpline calls reveal how COVID affected mental health

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