Perception of Health Conditions and Test Availability as Predictors of Adults’ Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey Study of Adults in Malaysia

Huiyang Dai, Stephen X. Zhang, Kim Hoe Looi, Rui Su and Jizhen Li
Additional contact information
Huiyang Dai: School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Stephen X. Zhang: Faculty of Professions, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia
Kim Hoe Looi: School of Economics and Management, Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang 43900, Selangor, Malaysia
Rui Su: School of Economics and Management, Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang 43900, Selangor, Malaysia
Jizhen Li: Research Center for Competitive Dynamics and Innovation Strategy, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-10

Abstract: Research identifying adults’ mental health during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic relies solely on demographic predictors without examining adults’ health condition as a potential predictor. This study aims to examine individuals’ perception of health conditions and test availability as potential predictors of mental health—insomnia, anxiety, depression, and distress—during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey of 669 adults in Malaysia was conducted during 2–8 May 2020, six weeks after the Movement Control Order (MCO) was issued. We found adults’ perception of health conditions had curvilinear relationships (horizontally reversed J-shaped) with insomnia, anxiety, depression, and distress. Perceived test availability for COVID-19 also had curvilinear relationships (horizontally reversed J-shaped) with anxiety and depression. Younger adults reported worse mental health, but people from various religions and ethnic groups did not differ significantly in reported mental health. The results indicated that adults with worse health conditions had more mental health problems, and the worse degree deepened for unhealthy people. Perceived test availability negatively predicted anxiety and depression, especially for adults perceiving COVID-19 test unavailability. The significant predictions of perceived health condition and perceived COVID-19 test availability suggest a new direction for the literature to identify the psychiatric risk factors directly from health-related variables during a pandemic.

Keywords: psychiatric screening; perceived health condition; perceived COVID-19 test availability; risk factors; 2019-nCoV; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5498/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5498/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:15:p:5498-:d:391875

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().