A new medical study finds that reports of clinical depression and anxiety among American adults spiked only “modestly” during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, despite online surveys that suggested otherwise.
The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, analyzes data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a monthly state-based telephone survey.
Ten public health researchers who conducted the study found that “clinically significant anxiety and depression increased only modestly overall” among more than 1.7 million adults who answered the survey’s mental health questions from March to December 2020, compared with data from 2017 to 2019.