The Correlation of Mental Health Illness and the COVID-19 pandemic in 5 US States with the Lowest Mental Health Issues

by Cinthia Flores, Esther Wiafe, Armita Shahmoradikhorrami

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19, the disease caused bySARS-CoV-2, a pandemic (‘WHO Director-General's’, 2022). Our goal is to communicate whether the prevalence of mental health issues in five states in the United States with the lowest mental health is correlated with the COVID-19 pandemic. We looked at Connecticut,Massachusetts, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Vermont. We chose these states because we wanted to analyze if states with the lowest mental health issues had significant changes during the pandemic. To do this, we analyzed data from 2018–2021 for each of the 5 states. The questions we looked at are: what was the prevalence of mental illness in US states before and after the pandemic? What was the prevalence of mental illness in US state populations (adults and youth) before and during the pandemic? How accessible was mental health care in US states before and during the pandemic? We hypothesize that the COVID-19 pandemic is correlated with increased mental health illness and access to resources in U.S. states with the lowest mental health issues.

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