Journal
JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH
Volume 24, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
JMIR PUBLICATIONS, INC
DOI: 10.2196/32598
Keywords
COVID-19; mental health; outbreak; epidemic; pandemic; psychological response; emotional well-being; ecological momentary assessment; risk; protective factors; lockdown measures; loneliness; mood inertia; stressors; mobile apps; mHealth; digital health; EMA; smartphone apps; network model; cognition; stress; temporal dynamic network; permutation testing; network comparison; network characteristics; multilevel vector autoregressive model; mlVAR
Funding
- Berlin University Alliance
- Elsa-Neumann Stipendium
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Loneliness plays a central role in triggering stress-related behaviors and cognition during the COVID-19 lockdown. The study suggests that loneliness should be prioritized in mental health interventions during lockdown, and physical activity can serve as a buffer for loneliness amid social restrictions.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown measures impacted mental health worldwide. However, the temporal dynamics of causal factors that modulate mental health during lockdown are not well understood. Objective: We aimed to understand how a COVID-19 lockdown changes the temporal dynamics of loneliness and other factors affecting mental health. This is the first study that compares network characteristics between lockdown stages to prioritize mental health intervention targets. Methods: We combined ecological momentary assessments with wrist-worn motion tracking to investigate the mechanism and changes in network centrality of symptoms and behaviors before and during lockdown. A total of 258 participants who reported at least mild loneliness and distress were assessed 8 times a day for 7 consecutive days over a 213-day period from August 8, 2020, through March 9, 2021, in Germany, covering a no-lockdown and a lockdown stage. COVID-19-related worry, information-seeking, perceived restriction, and loneliness were assessed by digital visual analog scales ranging from 0 to 100. Social activity was assessed on a 7-point Likert scale, while physical activity was recorded from wrist-worn actigraphy devices. Results: We built a multilevel vector autoregressive model to estimate dynamic networks. To compare network characteristics between a no-lockdown stage and a lockdown stage, we performed permutation tests. During lockdown, loneliness had the highest impact within the network, as indicated by its centrality index (ie, an index to identify variables that have a strong influence on the other variables). Moreover, during lockdown, the centrality of loneliness significantly increased. Physical activity contributed to a decrease in loneliness amid the lockdown stage. Conclusions: The COVID-19 lockdown increased the central role of loneliness in triggering stress-related behaviors and cognition. Our study indicates that loneliness should be prioritized in mental health interventions during lockdown. Moreover, physical activity can serve as a buffer for loneliness amid social restrictions.
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