Positive report about D-FW mental health is encouraging but not the end of the issue

During the pandemic, there was good mental health news last week: a survey of US adults with surprisingly positive results. According to Barna Research, 74% of Americans say the pandemic didn’t affect their mental health. And even better news, Dallas-Fort Worth respondents say they outperform the rest of the nation in almost every category in the survey.

Barna asked respondents about the impact the pandemic had on their emotions, relationships, self-care, support networks, and job satisfaction. Compared to the nationwide responses, 6% fewer respondents from D-FW said that their mental health was negatively affected. When asked to identify with a range of negative emotions (lonely, depressed, anxious, burned out, etc.), D-FW respondents did so at a lower rate than US adults in all categories. D-FW respondents also reported taking better care of themselves and being more satisfied with their job during the pandemic. Surprisingly, two-thirds of US respondents said the pandemic actually improved their closest relationships.

The report isn’t just good news. There is still a high percentage of people exposed to a lot of stress. In fact, 61% of Americans feel stressed at least once or twice a month, and 14% say the feeling is “very intense” or “unbearable”.

A quota random sample was used in the survey. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points at a confidence level of 95%.

We are surprised by these results. After nearly two years of pandemic stress, lifestyle adjustments, and political upheaval, we would have expected Americans to report more mental health issues.

In fact, just days after Barna published their research, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association issued a joint statement warning them of “rising rates of mental health problems in children, adolescents and children their families ”warned. ”

Savannah Kimberlin, Director of Research Solutions at Barna, said there is likely a huge difference between the way adults and minors experience pandemic stress.

In a separate study, Barna asked a group of respondents of different ages whether they had experienced anxiety and depression. The results, broken down by generation, showed a stair step. The younger the cohort, the more anxiety and depression they reported, Kimberlin said.

It is certainly good news that some say they made deeper connections while locked up with loved ones. And it’s good news that many voices – from Barna to the American Academy of Pediatrics to some of our favorite stars – are joining a national mental health conversation. It wasn’t long ago that this would have been taboo.

As mentioned earlier, disrupting our lives and social support systems is a less visible, but no less real, plague than the COVID-19 pandemic. We should address this question through politics, research and open discussions.

Kimberlin’s message to North Texas was: “She is actually a little better off than the rest of the nation, and it is worth celebrating. But that doesn’t mean we can neglect this conversation or our focus on this topic. It can come back and bite us if we’re not careful. “

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