ABSTRACT
Background Research identifying adults’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic relies solely on demographic predictors without examining adults’ health status during the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential predictor.
Methods An online survey of 669 adults in Malaysia was conducted during May 2–8, 2020, six weeks after a Movement Control Order (MCO) was issued.
Findings Adults’ health condition had curvilinear relationships (horizontally reversed J-shaped) with insomnia, anxiety, depression and distress. Reported test availability for COVID-19 (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) 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.
Interpretation Adults with worse health conditions had more mental health problems, especially adults at the lower end of the health spectrum. Test availability negatively predicted anxiety and depression, especially for adults experiencing poor COVID-19 test availability. The significant predictions of health condition and COVID-19 test availability suggest a new direction for the literature to identify psychiatric risk factors directly from health related variables during a pandemic.
Funding Tsinghua University-INDITEX Sustainable Development Fund (Project No. TISD201904).
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
We acknowledge the support of Tsinghua University-INDITEX Sustainable Development Fund (Project No. TISD201904).
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The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:
The survey was granted ethical approval by Tsinghua University (20200322).
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Paper in collection COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints from medRxiv and bioRxiv
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, California Institute of Technology, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Imperial College London, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, The University of Edinburgh, University of Washington, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
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