COVID-19 vaccines and mental distress

Francisco Perez-Arce, Marco Angrisani, Daniel Bennett, Jill Darling, Arie Kapteyn and Kyla Thomas

PLOS ONE, 2021, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought about large increases in mental distress. The uptake of COVID-19 vaccines is expected to significantly reduce health risks, improve economic and social outcomes, with potential benefits to mental health. Purpose: To examine short-term changes in mental distress following the receipt of the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Methods: Participants included 8,003 adults from the address-based sampled, nationally representative Understanding America Study (UAS), surveyed at regular intervals between March 10, 2020, and March 31, 2021 who completed at least two waves of the survey. Respondents answered questions about COVID-19 vaccine status and self-reported mental distress as measured with the four-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4). Fixed-effects regression models were used to identify the change in PHQ-4 scores and categorical indicators of mental distress resulting from the application of the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Results: People who were vaccinated between December 2020 and March 2021 reported decreased mental distress levels in the surveys conducted after receiving the first dose. The fixed-effects estimates show an average effect of receiving the vaccine equivalent to 4% of the standard deviation of PHQ-4 scores (p-value

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0256406

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256406

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