Impact of COVID-19
The Covid-19 pandemic, and the unprecedented measures required to reduce the spread of the virus, have placed extraordinary pressures and demands on everyone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, around 1 in 5 adults in Britain experienced some form of depression in the first 3 months of 2021 - that’s over double the figure prior to the pandemic.
Suffolk Public Health focused on ‘public mental health’ for the 2021 Annual Public Health Report (Better Together) to understand what everyone can do to support mental well-being – as individuals and families, in communities, workplaces and groups, and across Suffolk as a whole. Even at the height of the pandemic, many individuals and organisations in Suffolk did things that supported our collective mental well-being. This is a concept known as ‘public mental health’: "The focused actions taken to improve mental health and wellbeing, and prevent mental ill-health, by individuals, communities and organisations".
National studies show deteriorations in mental health and wellbeing between March and May 2020, followed by a period of improvement through July, August and September 2020, and then a second deterioration between October 2020 and February 2021, followed by another period of recovery but not to pre-pandemic levels. Some groups have been more likely to experience poor or deteriorating mental health: women, young adults (aged between 18 and 34), adults with pre-existing mental or physical health conditions, adults experiencing loss of income or employment, adults in deprived neighbourhoods, some ethnic minority populations and those who experienced local lockdowns. Suffolk Mind’s COVID-19 impact report (published November 2021) suggested “the number of people susceptible to stress or mental ill health has doubled since March 2020”. Their research confirms that “those who are not working or are younger are less likely to be well”, while older people and the retired are least affected overall.
Some children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing has been substantially impacted due to and during the pandemic (particularly children with special educational needs (SEND), girls, children in care or disadvantaged financially, with pre-existing mental health needs, from Black Asian and Minority ethnic backgrounds, and LGBTQ+ young people). In England, there was an 81% increase in referrals to children and young people’s mental health services (April to September 2021 compared to the same period in 2019), compared to an 11% increase for adults. Healthwatch Suffolk reported in My Health, Our Future Phase 5 (2021) that “young people are now less resilient and more likely to have poorer wellbeing compared to 2019, revealing the negative impact of the pandemic on their mental health… some groups (e.g., young people from multi-ethnic communities, students with disabilities and LGBT*Q+ young people) [were] disproportionately impacted by mental health and emotional wellbeing concerns.”