Anxiety and happiness in pandemic times

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-11-29 00:01

New Zealand

Image by Willfried Wende from Pixabay

Loneliness, physical health, family and financial wellbeing were linked to anxiety and happiness in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey of 30,000 New Zealanders. Researchers used responses from the December 2020 Household Labour Force Survey to look at factors linked with mental wellbeing. After controlling
for all other factors, Māori and Pacific populations had higher levels of happiness than Pākehā, and older adults reported higher levels of happiness and lower
levels of anxiety. Meanwhile, anxiety was linked to variables like being female and experiencing discrimination, among several other factors. The researchers suggest their findings could help understand how influences on mental wellbeing differ during crises, and help with tailored approaches for different groups in future.

Media release

From: Pasifika Medical Association Group

Anxiety is ever-prevalent and on the rise, particularly in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated measures of anxiety and happiness from December 2020 in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the midst of this pandemic. We found that both anxiety and happiness were related to loneliness, physical health, family wellbeing, financial wellbeing, age and gender. After controlling for all other factors, Māori and Pacific populations had higher levels of happiness than Pākehā. Anxiety and happiness were also different in some ways, where discrimination was related to anxiety, while greater levels of trust in the police, the health system and more general trust were related to greater happiness.

Journal/
conference: New Zealand Medical Journal

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Funder: Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand (awarded to Dr Harrison). School of Pharmacy, University of Otago - Provision of STATSNZ access funding.

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