Hurricane Harvey’s hardest hit survivors five times as likely to experience anxiety from COVID-19 pandemic

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame with collaborators at Rice University and the Environmental Defense Fund, deployed new surveys to assess the economic and health impacts of the pandemic nationally, but with a special focus on those hit by back-to-back climate disasters.

The Pandemic Worsened Young Women’s Depression and Anxiety More than Young Men’s

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an uneven impact on mental health, affecting young women more adversely in some regards than young men, a new study suggests. Income loss likewise was associated with increases in depression. At the same time, however, the young people actually showed a reduction in binge drinking and alcohol problems. The combination of findings highlights the complexity of the pandemic’s behavioral health effects. The pandemic has raised widespread concern that its related stressors — such as social isolation, job loss, financial strain, and increased caregiving responsibilities — may have broadly aggravated substance use and mental health conditions. People age 18–25 were thought to be especially vulnerable, because of their transitional life stage and relative propensity to risky behaviors such as heavy drinking. While some studies have indicated that the pandemic was associated with intensifying mental illness symptoms and substance use in this age group, most did not