Episode 26: How Has The Covid-19 Pandemic Affected Our Mental Health?

This is Episode 26 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here.

What impact has the pandemic had on people’s mental health? In this episode, our presenter Ginny Smith talks to researchers who have been conducting work throughout the pandemic to understand the toll that it has taken on our wellbeing. Ginny learns about the different factors that can make us more or less vulnerable to these effects, finds out how pregnant women have fared during this stressful time, and also hears about emerging data that finds links between the virus itself and mental health conditions.

Our guests, in order of appearance, are Dr Susanne Schweizer, Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Professor Paul Harrison from the University of Oxford.

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Episode credits: Presented and produced by Ginny Smith. Script edits by Matthew Warren. Mixing and editing by Jeff Knowler. PsychCrunch theme music by Catherine Loveday and Jeff Knowler. Art work by Tim Grimshaw.

Background reading for this episode

• More information about the CORAL study is available on their website
• Paul Harrison’s paper describing the link between Covid-19 infection and mental health conditions is available open access here. There is also a university press release about the work, and another related paper by the team

Over the past year and a half, we’ve published many articles about Covid-19 and mental health at Research Digest, including:

The process of psychological recovery begins while a stressful event is still going on, according to study of early stages of coronavirus pandemic

During lockdown, couples were happier when they blamed the pandemic for their stress

Rates of postnatal depression among new mothers rose sharply during lockdown                     

Regular gamblers turned to online gambling during the pandemic

There’s lots more from our friends at The Psychologist too, who have collated their contributions here

PsychCrunch is sponsored by Routledge Psychology

Routledge Psychology are giving PsychCrunch listeners the chance to discover even more ground-breaking research: free access to 5 articles of your choosing from over 4.5 million at tandfonline.com, plus a 20% discount on books at routledge.com.

For links to all our previous podcasts, check out our main podcast page