Mental health and the overall tendency to follow official recommendations against COVID-19: A U-shaped relationship?

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the association between several mental health indicators (depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness) and the overall tendency to follow official recommendations regarding self-protection against COVID-19 (i.e., overall compliance). We employ panel data from the COME-HERE survey, collected over four waves, on 7,766 individuals (22,878 observations) from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. Employing a flexible specification that allows the association to be non-monotonic, we find a U-shaped relationship, in which transitions to low and high levels of mental health are associated with higher overall compliance, while transitions to medium levels of mental health are associated with less overall compliance. Moreover, anxiety, stress, and loneliness levels at ba

SUBMITTER: Apouey B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11198746 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature