COVID-Minds: Mental Health during Covid-19

This proposal is for the establishment of an international mental health research network for Covid-19 and the running of a UK mixed-methods mental health study. The proposed network will have three core aims: To support the establishment of high-quality longitudinal studies in countries internationally exploring the effects of Covid-19 on mental health To enable international collaboration in longitudinal data analysis to understand cross-cultural differences in the mental health effects of Covid-19 To catalogue and disseminate other quantitative and qualitative mental health research on Covid-19 We will also lead a large-scale UK concurrent mixed methods study comprising a longitudinal study and a qualitative interview study to provide high quality, rigorous scientific data on the mental health impact of Covid-19 in the UK. This study is already underway and has 5 core aims: To understand the psychological and social impact of Covid-19 To map how the psychosocial impact evolves over time as social isolation measures get stricter and once measures are relaxed To ascertain which groups are at greatest risk of adverse effects on their mental health To explore the interaction between psychosocial impact and adherence to healthy and protective behaviours To identify activities during isolation that could buffer against adverse effects