Loosen, Skvortsova, & Hauser (2021) recently examined increased rates of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and information-seeking during the Covid-19 pandemic. Increased mental-health symptoms as a reaction to stressful life events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, are common. Critically, successful adaptation helps to reduce such symptoms to baseline, preventing long-term psychiatric disorders. It is thus important to understand whether and which psychiatric symptoms show transient elevations, and which persist long-term and become chronically heightened. At particular risk for the latter trajectory are symptom dimensions directly affected by the pandemic, such as obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptoms. In this longitudinal large-scale study (N = 406), the researchers assessed how OC, anxiety and depression symptoms changed throughout the first pandemic wave in a sample of the general UK public. Loosen, Skvortsova, & Hauser further examined how these symptoms affected pandemic- related information seeking and adherence to governmental guidelines.
(A, B) Regression models estimated separately for each psychiatric dimension (left panels) showed that OC symptoms and anxiety were associated with increased information seeking at time point T1 (N = 406; A) and time point T2 (N = 296; B). When combining all three psychiatric scores in one model (right panels) only OC symptoms remained associated with information seeking at both time points. Error bars represent standard errors and **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Their findings indicate that scores in all psychiatric domains were initially elevated, but showed distinct longitudinal change patterns. Depression scores decreased, and anxiety plateaued during the first pandemic wave, while OC symptoms further increased, even after the ease of Covid-19 restrictions. These OC symptoms were directly linked to Covid-related information seeking, which gave rise to higher adherence to government guidelines. This increase of OC symptoms in this non-clinical sample shows that the domain is disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Loosen, Skvortsova, & Hauser conclude that the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on public mental health, calls for continued close observation of symptom development and mental health treatment.
Code availability The code and data to reproduce the main analyses are freely available in an Open Science Framework (OSF) repository, at https://osf.io/3tue7/
Loosen, A.M., Skvortsova, V. & Hauser, T.U. (2021). Obsessive–compulsive symptoms and information seeking during the Covid-19 pandemic. Translational Psychiatry, 11, 309. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01410-x
About the Author
Matthew T. Wilson, PhD, has spent half of his life in Jacksonville, Alabama. He recently has moved back to the area, where he and his partner, Emma H. Wilson, PhD, are co-owners of Wilson Psychology Group, LLC. They have one son, Madison H. Wilson.
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