Chair: Andrea Cipriani

Abstract:
Deterioration of mental health (including increase in alcohol and substance abuse and violence) could be a serious negative effect of the COVID19 pandemic. The MHCOVID (Mental Health and COVID) project aims to provide reliable large-scale evidence about changes in mental health as a result of the COVID19 pandemic and the lockdown measures put in place worldwide. We perform a living, online systematic review of prevalence studies for any mental health condition in the general population. To evaluate the space-temporal changes in mental health we use advanced statistical methodology (and novel ideas of crowdsourcing the review process, open science and open data.
In this presentation, we will show preliminary results from the MHCOVID project that answer the following questions: * What is the prevalence of mental health problems in the general population worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic? * How are mental health problems associated with the extent and intensity of the pandemic and the measures to contain the pandemic? * Which demographic characteristics (such as sex and age) are associated with these prevalences?

Further details about MHCOVID can be found on the project’s website mhcovid.ispm.unibe.ch

For more information and to register contact the series coordinator: Katherine Stevens (katherine.stevens@psych.ox.ac.uk)