Did lockdowns and isolation compliance lead to lasting mental health issues?

As people return to normalcy there’s a lingering question regarding the pandemic lockdown policies and whether there may be lingering ramifications in the coming years.

Recently, a survey from Bangor University was released which suggested that people who were stricter in following COVID policies may have worse mental health overall.

At least, that’s the claim being made in media outlets including The Guardian which provided this headline:

And more recently the conservative outlet The Western Journal also reported on this study:

For all intents and purposes, a study suggesting lasting mental health issues following lockdowns wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Aside from the obvious lasting impact the lockdowns had on the economy there’s also a serious question regarding whether many of these infection outbreaks are related to possible immunity debt. There’s also concern that students have fallen seriously behind in their education and may not be doing well socially and mentally after isolating for so long.

That being said, a study/survey that purports to provide evidence of something of the obvious doesn’t inherently mean that the survey may do so.

The study was conducted in two parts, with Part 1 focusing on participant’s personality type while also examining their behaviors during the lockdown period of 2020. Part 2 entailed a series of surveys between February 15^th and May 10^th of this year (2023) wherein participants were provided short surveys asking about their well-being during the post-lockdown period. The surveys were conducted every 2 weeks over the course of 3 months.

The crux of this study was to examine two personality traits called agency and communion. Agency, or agentic personality, refers to individuals who exhibit high self-reliance, independence/autonomy, and strong internal locus of control. In contrast, people who exhibit communal traits are more likely to be community-driven, more caring/empathetic, and exhibit more social dependency.

And so we can see what the angle of the study is: how do agentic people respond to COVID policies and post-lockdown life relative to communal individuals.

Unfortunately, if one were to want an actual answer to this question readers may have to look else.

Aside from articles from various outlets the only source of this survey was in a findings report, although the researchers also reported on their findings on Bangor University’s website as well (with the full study being available by contacting the researchers):

Again, aside from the findings report (which is rather lacking) there isn’t any place where the research can be found, so it’s rather interesting to see several outlets covering these findings, although I’m partially inclined to believe that outlets chose to cover this article because it would lead to clicks.

The summary of the findings can be seen below:

The findings report doesn’t provide much in how they categorized people based on personality types. It also doesn’t provide any metrics on how the survey was scored and what the general responses were to the surveys, and because of that I’m less inclined to look at these findings as any hard evidence of validation towards the assumptions presented.

With that in mind, I find a better thing to focus on are the interpretations of these findings. Of note, look at how agentic people are described relative to communal individuals in both the findings report as well as on Bangor University’s website, respectively:

“Agentic individuals are motivated by power, influence, and control. For agentic characters, complying with health advice poses a threat to their sense of control, and as a result, they are less likely to adopt new health behaviours. Our analysis suggests that agentic characters are more likely to adopt new health behaviours when they understand the personal health risks and consequences of not complying. This self-focused response is in line with their 3/4 tendency to prioritise their own well-being in response to factors that threaten their sense of personal competence and independence.”

“The team found that those who were more sensitive to the needs of others were more likely to have complied with lockdown rules and health advice, compared to those who were more focused on their own needs and priorities.”

Although I find the findings rather lacking (again, evaluation of the actual study is needed), the framing of these studies is worth considering. It seems rather obvious that agentic individuals/those who have decided to rebut lockdown policies are made out to appear more selfish and uncaring for others. It’s something we’ve heard quite often when people were criticized for not masking or choosing to go out and live their lives. What’s a bit concerning is the fact that this similar language has found their way into studies such as this one, in which it is made out that those who didn’t follow COVID policies did so due to selfishness alone, rather than the fact that many people were concerned that the severity of COVID was overblown or that the policies would lead to more harm than good down the line.

There’s an inherent negative connotation associated with agentic personality traits and the enforcement of public health policies, which itself may not fit well as communal individuals may still consider the lockdown policies unwarranted. There are also many people who decided to go along with public health policies not to “flatten the curve” but out of self-preservation. That is, people didn’t want to get sick and so would rather have the entire world come to a halt under that premise alone. I could just as easily consider this perspective to be a rather selfish one and would quite frankly be considered rather agentic in nature.

But the end results, or really the way to deal with agentic individuals proposed by the findings report is something we’ve heard often as well. In order to get people to comply you have to make it personal; make people who show some sense of autonomy and independence that they are likely to become ill and die.

In that regard this study is rather behind relative to what has already taken place , although it may further aid the emphasis that public messaging may be further directed towards noncompliant groups of individuals. It may be more food for thought as to how future public health messaging will be conducted.

As to the mental health of those post-lockdown, the findings report is far too ambiguous to really make much sense of what “well-being” refers to in this context. This is important given that the interpretation suggests a correlation between more compliance and worse signs of depression and mental health. Again, this doesn’t tell us that these people may be more prone to masking or isolation paranoia as The Western Journal puts it, and on the surface one confounder could be that those who are high in communal traits may be hit worse by isolation and the inability to see others. It’s important to remember that “well-being” would have to be defined within this context. We would also need evidence that participants’ further continuation of policies may also have an effect on their mental health (again, requiring an examination of the survey questions).

Note that the average age of the individuals in this survey are in their early 60’s (mean= 63, SD= 12.9), and so I wouldn’t be surprised if age played a clear factor regarding these findings as older people may be more influenced by announcements of hospitalizations and death.

So, although this study may seem to provide further insights into post-pandemic fallout, it unfortunately doesn’t capture much in detailing the headlines that the press has been littered with. And instead, it rather serves to reaffirm the idea that public health messaging may work more closely in order to create better compliance, likely by targeting individuals who exhibit otherwise “unwanted” personality traits.

I do find some of the comments to be important to consider regarding the lack of transitioning to normalcy, and it probably serves more as a reminder for failures in both messaging as well as a problem of a society who constantly needs to be told what to think and how to behave.

Altogether, there’s a serious messaging problem that continues to miss out on actual nuance and laying blame on groups in particular. Also, it’s probably not a good idea to try and manipulate people’s behaviors, especially if misinformation and paranoia may be used to enforce compliance.

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