Hiring a quant social scientist (post PhD) for position as researcher in Copenhagen, Denmark. Place. Is. Awesome! https://rockwoolfonden.dk/stillingsopslag/research-position-at-the-rockwool-foundation-research-unit/
Lars H. Andersen
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PhD, Research Professor, Head of Research on Marginalized Groups at ROCKWOOL Foundation. Quant studies of most things related to contact with the CJ system. #criminology #sociology.
Tuesday eve at 11pm. Kids are asleep. Wife is away. It is definitely time for... WAIT, WHAT?! The Statistics Denmark research servers are down?! Nooooooo!
... and indicate that we may face important challenges on parameters that are important to us as the result of the pandemic
5) In all, I believe our study on one hand confirms decreasing mental health during the pandemic but also, on another, nuances our understanding of the magnitude of the decrease by including a pre-pandemic baseline (which is, believe it or not, a rare feat in this type of research!) and documenting initial improvements to mental health during lockdown. Results for the parent gap -> gender gap in mental health as the pandemic unfolded are just mind blowing to me
4) The elderly reported increasing levels of stress/depression throughout the pandemic. But they were also the ones with by far the lowest prevalence to begin with.
3) Especially young respondents were challenged: more than four in ten at risk of developing stress/depression
2) After improvements for all groups but the elderly during first lockdown, levels increased to or above pre-pandemic levels as the pandemic unfolded.
1) Prior to first lockdown, parents (irrespective of gender) had higher risks than those without children. But during the pandemic, this parent gap closed. In its stead a gender gap opened: At the end of the pandemic, women (irrespective of parenthood) had higher risks than men (irrespective of parenthood).
Did I mention that I have a new paper out w great folks (Marcelo Cardona, @pfallesen, and Tim Bruckner)? Just published in BMC Public Health, on the risk of stress/depression during the pandemic in Denmark: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-15129-5.
For the study behind the paper, we collected and used 10 nationally representative survey rounds (some panel, some repeat cross sections) from just before first lockdown to April 2022.
Key findings:
Stress/depression across the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark - BMC Public Health
Background Global estimates suggest strained mental health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the lack of nationally representative and longitudinal data with clinically validated measures limits knowledge longer into the pandemic. Methods Data from 10 rounds of nationally representative surveys from Denmark tracked trends in risk of stress/depression from just before the first lockdown and through to April 2022. We focused on age groups and men and women in different living arrangements and controlled for seasonality in mental health that could otherwise be spuriously related to pandemic intensity. Results Prior to first lockdown, we observed a “parent gap”, which closed with the first lockdown. Instead, a gender gap materialized, with women experiencing higher risks than men—and higher than levels predating first lockdown. Older respondents (+ 70 years) experienced increasing risks of stress/depression early in the pandemic, while all other groups experienced decreases. But longer into the pandemic, risks increased for all age groups and reached (and sometimes exceeded) levels from before first lockdown. Conclusion Denmark had low infection rates throughout most of the pandemic, low mortality rates across the entire pandemic, and offered financial aid packages to curb financial strains. Despite this circumstance, initial improvements to mental health during the first lockdown in Denmark were short-lived. Two years of pandemic societal restrictions correspond with deteriorating mental health, as well as a change from a parenthood gap in mental health before first lockdown to a gender gap two years into the pandemic.