A daily diary study into the effects on mental health of COVID-19 pandemic-related behaviors

Abstract

Background: Recommendations for promoting mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic include maintaining social contact, through virtual rather than physical contact, moderating substance/alcohol use, and limiting news and media exposure. We seek to understand if these pandemic-related behaviors impact subsequent mental health.

Methods: Daily online survey data were collected on adults during May/June 2020. Measures were of daily physical and virtual (online) contact with others; substance and media use; and indices of psychological striving, struggling and COVID-related worry. Using random-intercept cross-lagged panel analysis, dynamic within-person cross-lagged effects were separated from more static individual differences.

Results: In total, 1148 participants completed daily surveys [657 (57.2%) females, 484 (42.1%) males; mean age 40.6 (s.d. 12.4) years]. Daily increases in news consumed increased COVID-related worrying the next day [cross-lagged estimate = 0.034 (95% CI 0.018-0.049), FDR-adjusted p = 0.00005] and vice versa [0.03 (0.012-0.048), FDR-adjusted p = 0.0017]. Increased media consumption also exacerbated subsequent psychological struggling [0.064 (0.03-0.098), FDR-adjusted p = 0.0005]. There were no significant cross-lagged effects of daily changes in social distancing or virtual contact on later mental health.

Conclusions: We delineate a cycle wherein a daily increase in media consumption results in a subsequent increase in COVID-related worries, which in turn increases daily media consumption. Moreover, the adverse impact of news extended to broader measures of psychological struggling. A similar dynamic did not unfold between the daily amount of physical or virtual contact and subsequent mental health. Findings are consistent with current recommendations to moderate news and media consumption in order to promote mental health.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; cross-lagged effects; media consumption; mental health; social isolation.

Fig. 1.

Participant workflow.

Fig. 2.

Cross-lagged effects between mental health and both behavior (contact and news/media consumption) and substance use. Significant positive lags (a, b, c) are represented by full lines; negative lags (d, e, f) by dotted lines. Thickness of the connecting lines is proportional to the –log10 FDR p value. Values for the paths a, b, c, d, e, f are given in the table.