Change in mental and physical health, and social relationships, during highly restrictive lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Australia
In this study we aimed to examine potential change in mental/physical health and social relationships during a highly restrictive COVID-19 lockdown period in Australia during April 2020. Our survey (n = 1599) included questions about concerns, social behaviour, perceived change in relationship quality, social media use, frequency of exercise, physical health, and mental health during COVID-19 lockdown. When estimating their mental health for the previous year 13% of participants reported more negative than positive emotion, whereas this increased to 41% when participants reflected on their time during COVID-19 lockdown. A substantial proportion (39-54%) of participants reported deterioration in mental health, physical health, financial situation, and work productivity. However, most of these participants reported 'somewhat' rather than 'a lot' of deterioration, and many others reported 'no change' (40-50%) or even 'improvement' (6-17%). Therefore, the psychological toll on Australians may not have been as large as other parts of the world with greater COVID-19 infection rates. Even less impact was apparent for social relationships (~68% reported 'no change') as participants compensated for decreased face-to-face interaction via increased technology-mediated interaction. Our findings highlight how technology-mediated communication can allow people to adequately maintain social relationships during an extreme lockdown event.