quote:
As the coronavirus pandemic has swept across America, so has an epidemic of depression, a new study shows.

Since the pandemic began, the prevalence of depression symptoms has roughly tripled, with the poor who lost jobs and savings most affected, researchers report.

"People with lower income were twice as likely to have depression, and people with the same income but who had less savings were 1.5 times more likely to have depression," said lead researcher Catherine Ettman, director of strategic development at Boston University's School of Public Health.

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Now, about six months after lockdown commenced in most other European countries, evidence of a significant worsening of population mental health is accumulating. In the United Kingdom, for example, the latest Office for National Statistics survey found that almost one in five adults were experiencing some form of depression in June 2020, almost double the prevalence recorded in the pre-lockdown period. The same survey reported that adults aged 16 to 39 years old, females, those unable to afford an unexpected expense, and people with disabilities were the most likely to experience depressive symptoms during the pandemic. Evidence of differential mental health impacts, particularly on (young) women and young people, and a potential widening of mental health inequalities, with the groups that had the poorest mental health pre-pandemic also having had the largest deterioration in mental health during the pandemic, has been found in other studies.Suicide researchers have noted that many, if not all, of the adverse consequences of governmental response to the pandemic are, in turn, risk factors for suicide.

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The long term effects of the increase in depression and other mental illnesses will be much greater than the effects of covid. The negative impacts of the covid lockdowns hurt those with lower incomes and preexisting conditions much more than people with higher incomes. Which is just more proof that the people that say we should continue shutdowns and delay reopening either do not understand or do not actually care that those measures are doing more harm than good.