Multifaceted mental health impact of COVID-19 – a cross-country comparison between Sweden and five other European countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented influence on the global economy and population health.

While the scientific community has alerted for adverse mental health impact of COVID-19, there are a lack of high-quality studies focusing on the entire spectrum of mental health (self-reported symptoms, clinical diagnosis, and suicidal behavior), with longitudinal data collection and cross-country comparison.

The proposed project will take advantage of a prospective cohort study “Omtanke2020” (28,000 participants) – specifically designed to investigate the mental health impact of COVID-19 in Sweden, the COVIDMENT consortium (400,000 participants) – a research collaboration on COVID-19 and mental health across six European countries, and a Swedish-Danish joint project on bereavement (7 million individuals and their parents) to study the mental health impact of COVID-19 among two high-risk groups (i.e., patients directly affected with COVID-19 and their families) and the general population, both during the pandemic and in its aftermath.

Specifically, we aim to estimate risk of mental illness (self-reported and clinically diagnosed) and suicidal behavior among:patients with COVID-19, compared to individuals without COVID-19, by disease severity.families of COVID-19 patients, compared to families of individuals without COVID-19, by whether the proband patient died from COVID-19.general population, by changes in working and life conditions inflicted by COVID-19.

As the disease burden and mitigating strategies to the pandemic vary considerably between countries, we will contrast Swedish data with data from Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia and Scotland to examine whether such variations impacted the burden of mental illness and suicidal behavior, during the pandemic and in the long run.

This research program aims to offer novel insights into the multifaceted mental health consequences of the current COVID-19 pandemic – a knowledgebase of vital global significance.