Assessing and Protecting the Mental Health of the Nation during the
COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium Study in Ireland
Latest research findings
Pre-published findings will be released here as soon as they are available.
Peer-reviewed articles can be found further down this page.
1. A research protocol for our ongoing work is available at HRB Open Research. Click here to read the protocol.
2. A core deliverable of this project is to understand what proportion of the Irish adult population was suffering from mental health problems prior to and during the pandemic. We sought to determine if the prevalence of mental health problems changed as a result of the pandemic and whether different groups in the population have been differently affected. These findings can be found here.
3. A measure to rapidly screen for mental health problems during the pandemic can be found here.
4. In this article, we respond to a proposal to reinstate the term 'mental illness' into the Irish Mental Health Act. We argue that this would be a regressive step that would put Ireland out of step with international norms. You can read our article here.
5. A key objective of our project was to determine how many people in the Irish population had experienced a decline in their mental health during the pandemic and what was associated with experiencing such a decline.
In this paper, we show that only 11% of Irish adults experienced such a decline. Overall, 71% of people experienced no change in their mental health, and 18% of people experienced an improvement in their mental health. You can read a pre-published version of this paper here.
6. A key objective of this project was to provide a rapid screening tool to aid in the identification of those at risk of deteriorating mental health during this pandemic. Based on empirical findings (point 5), we have developed a screening tool that may be used by all. This is available here.
7. Another objective of our project was to examine if there were changes in loneliness during the pandemic and if changes in loneliness were related to changes in depression. Results of this analysis can be found here.
8. The core objective of this project was to examine changes in mental health problems in the Irish population across the first year of the pandemic. These findings can be found here.
9. A policy brief based on our study findings can be found here.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Shevlin, M., Butter, S., McBride, O., Murphy, J., Gibson-Miller, J., Hartman, T. K., Levita, L., Mason, L., Martinez, A. P., McKay, R., Stocks, T. V. A., Bennett, K., Hyland, P., & Bentall, R. P. (2021). Refuting the myth of a ‘tsunami’ of mental ill-health in populations affected by COVID-19: Evidence that response to the pandemic is heterogenous, not homogeneous. Psychological Medicine. doi:10.1017/S0033291721001665
Hartman, T., Stocks, T., McKay, R., Gibson Miller, J., Levita, L., Martinez, A., Mason, L., McBride, O., Murphy, J., Shevlin, M., Bennett, K., Hyland, P., Karatzias, T., Vallières, F., & Bentall, R. P. (2021). The authoritarian dynamic during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effects on nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Social Psychological and Personality Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620978023
Video presentations
In this section are a collection of video presentations about key findings from the study.
Simply click on the title of each talk to watch it.