--- title: "Pandemic Wasn’t So Bad for Mental Health, Says Broken-Brained Study" description: "A recent study has found that people didn't acctually have that many mental health issues during the pandemic — in rich countries, that is." date: "2023-03-17" modified: "2023-03-17" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/bad-pandemic-mental-health-study" categories: - "Brain" - "Health & Medicine" - "Mental Health" tags: - "mental health" - "Pandemic" - "studies" --- # Pandemic Wasn’t So Bad for Mental Health, Says Broken-Brained Study ![]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Have you heard? According to some very smart people who did a study (of other studies), the COVID-19 pandemic didn't actually warp everyone's mental health as much as we thought it did! If you're rolling your eyes, you're not alone. Published earlier this month in the [British Medical Journal](), the meta-analysis looked at 137 studies from (and this is important) mostly-wealthy European and Asian countries in an apparent attempt to quantify the [many](), [many]() [academic]() and [anecdotal]() [findings]() which suggest that the pandemic absolutely ruined everyones' minds. What these researchers out of various Canadian academic institutions found instead was evidence suggesting maybe the pandemic and its lockdowns *weren't* so bad for the mental health of those lucky bastards after all. While the domestic income caveat *should* be the main criteria for any statements qualifying these research findings, social shares of the paper — which, we should note, does include in-journal links to two editorials, [one agreeing with the findings]() and [one critical of them]() — included no context or qualification at all, because social media is where nuance goes to die. Unsurprisingly, this controversial paper is making waves among both the [still-pissed-off COVID denialist set]() and equally-peeved [abundance-of-precautionists]() — but it's also irking those who find themselves between these two extremes, too. As [*BuzzFeed News* expertly outlined](), there are lots and lots of relatively normal people who've taken umbrage to the headlines and tweets about the study suggesting that mental health outcomes during the first years of the pandemic weren't as big of a problem "among general population studies" as they initially seemed. Even though, again, the meta-analysis writers' admitted that a whopping 77 percent of the countries they looked at were high-income. Indeed, the skewed headlines were so bad that Elon Musk's Twitter slapped a reader-generated note on [one of the more popular *BBC* posts]() caveating the entire thing: ![]() As ever, people wouldn't be on Twitter if it weren't at least *a little* fun, and to that end, it yielded plenty of anecdotal (and hilarious) evidence about the wild shit people did during the height of lockdown as their minds unspooled like yarn. For example: Getting "[divorced on Zoom]()," creating an [itemized spreadsheet]() about Netflix's soul-crushing adult cartoon "Bojack Horseman," and [writing a letter]() to the infamous "Tiger King" villain Joe Exotic in prison. To be clear: There's also, um, an *abundance* of data that utterly disproves the study (and the news coverage of it). Take, for example, a different meta-analysis [published in *The Lancet*]() right around the time the *BMJ* one was making the rounds which found, horrifyingly, that there was an upward trend of *children going to the hospital due to suicidal ideation* in 18 countries. If that's not evidence of a mental health crisis, good luck finding any, ever. While it's all fine and good that people in well-to-do countries supposedly experienced more mental resilience during those first hellish pandemic years, using this meta-analysis to make any sweeping suggestions about something as complex (and with such long-term implications) as mental health amid a global, paradigm-shifting event? Incidentally enough: Pretty crazymaking. **More on meta-analyses:** [*Dicks Are Getting Longer and Scientists Don't Know Why*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()