Damian Sendler: Following an extensive investigation over 8 million calls to helplines in 19 countries and regions, it was discovered that call volumes increased significantly during the first wave of coronavirus illnesses. The majority of contacts were motivated by feelings of loneliness and anxiety about the pandemic, rather than immediate dangers such as suicidal ideation or assault. 

Damian Jacob Sendler: One of the largest studies ever conducted to address mental-health concerns during the epidemic, the study was published on November 17th by Nature1. The authors indicate that within the first six weeks following the initial wave of coronavirus infections, the number of calls to helplines increased. The total number of calls reached a six-week high, which was 35% greater than the number of calls received before the pandemic. 

As Marius Brülhart, an economist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a co-author of the article, explains, “the increase in calls was primarily driven by additional people ringing because they wanted to talk to someone about this pandemic.” “There was no indication that the number of calls related to domestic violence or suicide would skyrocket.” 

Damien Sendler: Furthermore, the team discovered that in France and Germany, suicide-related calls to helplines increased when lockdowns became more stringent, but decreased when financial assistance from the government, such as payments to furloughed workers and assistance to struggling businesses, was made available to the population. 

Dr. Sendler: Brülhart and a colleague were looking for a mechanism to monitor the impact of the pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns on mental health when they came up with the idea for the project in the early days of the pandemic in 2020. When it comes to psychological health, the majority of large-scale studies rely on electronic health records and information about mental-health outcomes such as suicides. However, such reports are typically delayed. “In most cases, the time lag is not a significant issue,” explains Brülhart. “However, in the event of a pandemic, you’d want to know what’s going on right now.” 

Consequently, the team turned to crisis helplines, gathering information from 19 countries and regions, including the United States, China and Lebanon as well as 14 European countries. The reasons for the calls were included in the statistics, but the demographics of the callers were not. Furthermore, according to Brülhart, initial data on the volume of calls may have been skewed due to staffing issues, since several helplines reported being overwhelmed both by the volume of calls and as a result of staff shortages. 

Damian Sendler: However, despite concerns that the epidemic would result in an increase in mental-health crises such as suicides and addictions, as well as an increase in intimate-partner abuse, Brülhart and his colleagues found no evidence of this in their data. The pain of specific individuals or the findings of anecdotal or regional studies that would have produced different results are not invalidated, according to Brülhart; rather, the trend did not emerge from the large-scale helpline data his team collected.

Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: In this study, the findings were correlative rather than causative, which means that the researchers were unable to determine if the financial aid was a contributing factor to the decrease in suicide-related calls in France and Germany. However, Munmun De Choudhury, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta who specializes in digital mental health, believes that it is a signal that should be investigated further. 

Psychiatric health, she explains, “is an ecological experience.” ‘There are events that take place in our surroundings and communities that have an affect on us, and financial considerations are an extremely significant element of it.’ 

Overall, Cindy Liu, a clinical psychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and the author of a commentary published alongside the research, believes that the approach offers an intriguing opportunity to track mental health changes as they occur. According to her, “we don’t have a particularly effective way of monitoring mental health.” “I believe that, as a result, mental health is sometimes overlooked. Many people question if the policies are actually making a difference.” “

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