key: cord-0893738-0ppvwrv8
authors: Meda, Nicola; Slongo, Irene
title: Caution when linking COVID-19 to mental health consequences
date: 2020-05-06
journal: Brain Behav Immun
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.05.018
sha: fdca1688adae7799e3427092d19bc7c1c7d50b2d
doc_id: 893738
cord_uid: 0ppvwrv8

nan

The coronavirus pandemic has been influencing our lives since the beginning of 2020, forcing health professionals to exhausting work shifts in order to provide patients with the best possible care, workers to lose their jobs or to adapt to smart-working, researchers to close their laboratories, teachers to find new ways of providing education.

We are all troubled to varying degrees: the sudden change in our daily life patterns could have a negative impact on the mental health of those markedly affected (1) . The question is: to what extent are we affected and to what degree did our mental health worsen as a consequence of the lockdown? Prospective evidence of changes in the levels of psychological distress before, during and after isolation so far is lacking.

To our knowledge, only one prospective study investigated such changes during the outbreak in China (2) . Some authors provided interesting cross-sectional data (3), but unfortunately no control population could be assessed (the whole of Italy was put into lockdown). Most of the evidence from studies on the effects of previous lockdowns (4) is heterogeneous both in methodology and results, and thus the claims of media or researchers of a future "psychological pandemic" (5) do not appear to be evidencebased.

"Caution" should be the keyword when reporting opinions or data from crosssectional studies, especially in the absence of proper controls for lockdown. The effects of social isolation on mental health are poorly understood, and worldwide dissemination of putative catastrophic psychological consequences can do worse than restrictive measures per se: people in need may not seek help if they perceive that being in pain after isolation is common (as may occur after collective traumatic experiences); others may experience worsening symptoms due to social pressure or develop fictious symptomatology. Furthermore, also somatic symptom disorders could be exacerbated by intense fear of being infected (6) . It is of utmost importance to protect those most vulnerable from a sort of Werther (copycat) effect (7) which could lead susceptible subjects to experience greater damage from the depiction of lockdown on the part of media and researchers than by the lockdown itself (8) .

We declare no competing interests

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