Journal article
Impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown and relevant vulnerabilities on capability well-being, mental health and social support: an Austrian survey study
- Abstract:
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Background: Impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and its public health measures go beyond physical and mental health and incorporate wider well-being impacts in terms of what people are free to do or be. We explored the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown and relevant vulnerabilities on capability well-being, mental health and social support in Austria.
Methods: Adult Austrian residents (n = 560) provided responses to a cross-sectional online survey about their experiences during Covid-19 lockdown (15 March-15 April 2020). Instruments measuring capabilities (OxCAP-MH), depression and anxiety (HADS), social support (MSPSS) and mental well-being (WHO-5) were used in association with six pre-defined vulnerabilities using multivariable linear regression.
Results: 31% of the participants reported low mental well-being and only 30% of those with a history of mental health treatment received treatment during lockdown. Past mental health treatment had a significant negative effect across all outcome measures with an associated capability well-being score reduction of − 6.54 (95%CI, − 9.26, − 3.82). Direct Covid-19 experience and being ‘at risk’ due to age and/or physical health conditions were also associated with significant capability deprivations. When adjusted for vulnerabilities, significant capability reductions were observed in association with increased levels of depression (− 1.77) and anxiety (− 1.50), and significantly higher capability levels (+ 3.75) were associated with higher levels of social support. Compared to the cohort average, individual capability impacts varied between − 9% for those reporting past mental health treatment and + 5% for those reporting one score higher on the social support scale.
Conclusions: Our study is the first to assess the capability limiting aspects of lockdown and relevant vulnerabilities alongside their impacts on mental health and social support. The negative capability well-being, mental health and social support impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown were strongest for people with a history of mental health treatment. Future public health policies concerning lockdowns should pay special attention to improve social support levels in order to increase public resilience.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 419.9KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12889-021-10351-5
Authors
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Public Health More from this journal
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 314
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2021-02-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-01-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2458
- ISSN:
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1471-2458
- Pmid:
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33557816
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1162090
- Local pid:
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pubs:1162090
- Deposit date:
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2023-09-05
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Simon et al
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s). 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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