Patsy IrizarDr Patsy Irizar, Simon Fellow at the University of Manchester, discusses new data which shows how COVID-19 impacted the mental health of ethnic minority people.
The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted ethnic minority people, in terms of both physical health (e.g., higher mortality rates, see Irizar et al., Sze et al. and Pan et al.) and lebanon rcs data economic (e.g., job loss) outcomes. I am interested in understanding whether ethnic minority people were also disproportionately impacted in terms of mental health outcomes. As part of my research fellowship, I am using data from the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS), which is available from the UK Data Service, to explore ethnic differences in mental health during the pandemic, and the possible reasons for these differences.
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health
The COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on mental health for many people in Britain, particularly during the first wave of infections and lockdown (e.g. Niedzwiedz et al., Pierce et al. 2020, Pierce et al. 2021). But some studies suggest that the long-term impact on mental health was minimal – though certain groups of people, including ethnic minority groups, reported worse mental health over time (e.g. Pierce et al. 2020). Existing studies are often limited as they do not have large enough samples of ethnic minority people, meaning groups are aggregated into broad categories and this may hide important differences in mental health across ethnic groups. This also means that they are not able to explore ethnic differences in mental health across other sub-groups, such as age and sex (and there are known differences in mental health depending on age and sex).