Aksoy, Ozan;
Wu, Alison Fang-Wei;
Aksoy, Sevgi;
Rivas, Carol;
(2024)
Social support and mental well-being among people with and without chronic illness during the Covid-19 pandemic: evidence from the longitudinal UCL covid survey.
BMC Psychology
, 12
, Article 136. 10.1186/s40359-024-01596-x.
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Abstract
Purpose: An immediate research priority recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic is well-being among some of our most vulnerable—people with chronic illness. We studied how mental health changed among people with and without chronic illness throughout the pandemic and the mediating role of social support. // Methods: We used the 3-waves of COVID-19 survey within the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS, age 19, N = 5522) and MCS Parent (MCSP, age > > 19, N = 7479) samples, with additional pre-pandemic measures of some outcomes and exposure. Using Structural Equation Panel Models with Full Information Maximum Likelihood estimation to address missing data, we studied differences between respondents with a chronic illness and without, regarding depressive symptoms and mental well-being, with social provision, social support, and loneliness as potential mediators. // Results: Mental well-being (SWEMWBS) and psychological distress (Kessler-6) worsened significantly during the pandemic relative to baseline for people with and without chronic illness, while the latter group had substantially better well-being at all waves and the baseline regarding both outcomes. When the lockdown was lifted during wave-2, mental well-being temporarily rebounded, and distress waned among people without chronic illness but continued to worsen among people with chronic illness. Social support partially mediated the link between chronic illness and mental well-being. // Conclusions: The large mental well-being gap between people with and without chronic illness persisted during the pandemic. However, social support and provision can partially narrow this gap, hence should be employed in future pandemic management.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social support and mental well-being among people with and without chronic illness during the Covid-19 pandemic: evidence from the longitudinal UCL covid survey |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40359-024-01596-x |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01596-x |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Keywords: | Chronic illness, Mental wellbeing, Psychological distress, COVID-19, SEM |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189123 |
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