Mental Health in the US & the COVID-19 Pandemic
Midterm
(minor note: 2 graphs below are not mine, and I labeled those in the subtitle of each with [NOT MY GRAPH] )
The prevalence of the two most common mental illnesses in the United States
has seen a significant, concerning increase from 2019, Pre-Pandemic, to 2020 to now, over a year into all of this. To do this, I explored a large CDC data set that was made from a survey of thousands of individuals taken many times consistently throughout 2020 to now (it’s ongoing), that represents different corresponding populations, that sees whether people have recently been displaying symptoms of the mental conditions of anxiety, and depression.
According to one major CDC study (different than the one previously mentioned) , less than 20% of adults in the US experienced symptoms of anxiety in 2019. Compare that to the graph below I made from the data of the CDC data set of 2020/21, where symptoms of anxiety constantly hovered between 30–35% throughout the year.
Let’s dive further into this graph.
Although it is somewhat subtle, the changes and trends shown in the mental health graph is very significant, and aligns with a few trends in the Covid-19 graph. Firstly, it is pretty clear that generally, there is a trend showing that throughout the time span of the pandemic, the percentage of Americans displaying symptoms of anxiety/depression has increased overall.
Additionally, it also seems that periods of significant rising and falling in the percentage of Americans with symptoms of anxiety/depression aligns with significant periods of rising and falling Covid-19 deaths; one example is visible in the early Summer, where Covid-19 deaths started to significantly fall, as the first major “wave” of the pandemic seemed to pass, mental health seemed to significantly improve, with a large drop off in the percentage of people showing anxious/depressive symptoms; in another example however, we also see that following the late Summer and Fall, as the pandemic seemed to slowly catch back up and eventually make a significant return, mental health slowly declined, with increased anxiety/depression that peaked analogously with the second major wave of the pandemic, indicated with the peak of Covid-19 deaths in the graph.
Of course, we must remember the golden rule: correlation ≠ causation. Just because the two graphs seem to line up together quite well, we cannot make the conclusion that this is evidence of the severity of the pandemic in the country affecting the population’s mental health. Ultimately, given further analysis, we could deduce that they’re correlated, but with this information alone, nothing beyond that.
With this in mind; In my goal to bring out important trends about mental health in the data, I found several themes that were hard to discard, and in fact were so much more obvious trends than those surrounding changes due to COVID-19, that I decided to focus more on those narratives instead.
Firstly, taking a look at education level.
It is clear that for whatever reason it may be, generally the trend is that the higher the education level of a person, the less likely they show symptoms of anxiety or depression (with the exception of the prevalence with those with a High School diploma being higher than that of those with a college/associate’s degree). This might have to do with the idea that those with a better position to achieve greater academic success likely have greater access to resources to combat anxiety and depression.
Next let’s touch upon biological sex.
What the data showed was that on average biological males were less likely to show symptoms of both anxiety and depression than did females. This may have less to do with the idea that men are less likely to be depressed or anxious, and more to do with how men may tend to act more reserved and less likely to be open about showing their anxiety/depression, however it’s difficult to know and these are very generalized assumptions so we won’t elaborate too much on it.
Let’s take a look at age as a factor.
In this graph I decided additional to showing age as a comparative factor I’d also include a lineage of the beginning of data collection. to the present. There is a very clear and concerning, or maybe rather uplifting depending on how you look at it, trend in that the older a population, the smaller the prevalence of anxiety or depression. While different age groups generally followed the same variations from different points throughout the year, it’s notable to say that they sometimes vary at certain points.
Finally, last but least we have a heat map of average anxiety/depression prevalence of different states throughout the country.
I don’t have much to say about this one. It’s quite difficult to gather a cohesive narrative with what states are effected in which ways. Generally speaking Southern states and more populated states seem to be more effected than Northern states/less populated states, but this isn’t always true and I’m not really going to try and ascribe meaning or any kind of narrative to it.
