Patzina Alexander, Collischon Matthias, Hoffmann Rasmus, Obrizan Maksym
Institute of Sociology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 3;20(1):e0313689. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313689. eCollection 2025.
Based on nationally representative panel data (N person-years = 40,020; N persons = 18,704; Panel Labour Market and Social Security; PASS) from 2018 to 2022, we investigate how mental health changed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ time-distributed fixed effects regressions to show that mental health (Mental Health Component Summary Score of the SF-12) decreased from the first COVID-19 wave in 2020 onward, leading to the most pronounced mental health decreases during the Delta wave, which began in August 2021. In the summer of 2022, mental health had not returned to baseline levels. An analysis of the subdomains of the mental health measure indicates that long-term negative mental health changes are mainly driven by declines in psychological well-being and calmness. Furthermore, our results indicate no clear patterns of heterogeneity between age groups, sex, income, education, migrant status, childcare responsibilities or pre-COVID-19 health status. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a uniform effect on mental health in the German adult population and did not lead to a widening of health inequalities in the long run.
基于2018年至2022年具有全国代表性的面板数据（N人年=40,020；N人=18,704；面板劳动力市场和社会保障；PASS），我们研究了新冠疫情期间及之后心理健康状况如何变化。我们采用时间分布固定效应回归分析表明，心理健康（SF-12心理健康成分汇总得分）自2020年第一波新冠疫情起开始下降，在始于2021年8月的德尔塔毒株浪潮期间心理健康下降最为明显。到2022年夏天，心理健康仍未恢复到基线水平。对心理健康测量子领域的分析表明，长期负面心理健康变化主要由幸福感和平静度下降所致。此外，我们的结果表明，在年龄组、性别、收入、教育程度、移民身份、育儿责任或新冠疫情前健康状况方面，没有明显的异质性模式。因此，新冠疫情似乎对德国成年人口的心理健康产生了一致影响，从长远来看并未导致健康不平等加剧。
