People who strictly adhered to Covid rules have bad mental health now: Study
Wearing masks didn't help prevent Covid-19?
The worst of the Covid pandemic may be over and scientists and researchers are now in somewhat of a 'looking-back' mode during the period the world stood still. Academics at the Bangor University in Wales have found in a study that people who followed Covid restrictions more closely were prone to suffer from stress, depression and anxiety after the lockdown was lifted.
They of course do not say that Covid restrictions or any other curbs prescribed by authorities in view of a health crisis should not be followed. The study is more observational.
The study says that people who are more sensitive, caring and aware about other people's needs (communal personalities) followed the lockdown rules more strictly than people who were more independent, competitive and who wanted to have more control on their lives (agentic personalities).
“The more individuals complied with health advice during lockdown, the worse their wellbeing post-lockdown,” said Dr Marley Willegers and colleagues as quoted by The Guardian.
The researchers observed that there were upsides as well as downsides to the fear of catching Covid.
Also Read | Sex ritual of this bat isn't quite how mammals copulate, video recorded in Netherlands shows
“While increasing individuals’ worry of infection can effectively drive compliance, it also has negative consequences on people’s wellbeing and recovery,” they said.
The studied how compliant 1729 people in Wales were to restrictions during first UK-wide lockdown. This took place from March to September 2020. The researchers then measured depression, stress and anxiety levels in these people this year during February and May.
It was reportedly found that people with 'communal' personalities still had disturbance to their mental wellbeing while 'agentic' people were able to 'bounce back' better.
Dr Willegers, who is an academic at institute for the psychology of elite performance at Bangor University, said that for some people, the transition from getting repeated health advice to no advice post-lockdown proved difficult.
“Throughout the pandemic messaging campaigns were designed to ensure people continued to follow the rules. But there was no messaging campaign as we came out of the pandemic to help everyone safely transition back to normality."
“Without this, certain personality types have retained infection prevention behaviour and anxiety that undermines their mental wellbeing,” he added.
(With inputs from agencies)