How economic stressors and vaccination shaped mental health during the pandemic

A new paper co-authored by Chenyi Ma, research assistant professor at the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), explores the impact of job loss, food insecurity, and COVID-19 vaccination on anxiety levels among different demographic groups in the United States during the pandemic.

Published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, the paper uniquely uses a disaster risk management framework to examine mental health disparities, offering key insights for future disaster preparedness and response.

Ma and coauthors Tony E. Smith, professor emeritus at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Dennis P. Culhane, professor at SP2, analyzed national survey data to explore the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in relation to demographic characteristics, economic hardships, and COVID-19 vaccination status.

The findings reveal that Black and Hispanic Americans experienced higher rates of GAD compared to non-Hispanic white Americans. The researchers attribute these disparities to disproportionate experiences of job loss and food insecurity. After controlling for these economic factors, the researchers found that Hispanic and Black Americans were less likely to suffer from GAD than white Americans, further showing that disparities in mental health were largely driven by economic hardship.

The authors also find that older adults were less vulnerable to job loss and food insecurity, and therefore are significantly less likely to experience GAD than middle aged and younger adults.

Read more at SP2 News.