“How are you?” – a question about getting used to it. After all, it’s a pandemic and has been for what feels like an eternity. The coronavirus has been involved in our lives for two years, shaking up everyday life. Alpha, beta, delta, lockdowns, contact restrictions, keeping your distance and G-regulations – the stress factors have not decreased with the virus. That goes to the substance that is suffering mental health. This is also shown by the results of the Berlin CovSocial study, carried out by the Social Neurosciences Research Group of the Max Planck Society.
“During the two lockdowns, life satisfaction, optimism and positive feelings of the Berliners taking part in the survey decreased drastically,” explained study director Tania Singer. We’re talking about depression, anxiety, loneliness and stress. Younger people and women were hardest hit.
Mental health suffers
After the relaxation of the measures, the mood of the respondents improved significantly, but the initial level was rarely reached again. Even more: In the second longer lockdown, according to the study, mental health fell again to a low point.
So it was – at least mentally – better once. But not everything is bad. There are quite a few things that have been shown to have contributed to wellbeing in the pandemic and are therefore good inspiration for the months to come. We present five of them in the photo gallery above.