Adult Mental Health and Loneliness During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Late 2020

Abstract

Abstract. The COVID-19 pandemic had an adverse impact on the mental health of numerous people. To examine the psychological status of the general public across Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic, we collected data from 1,109 adults, ages ranging from 18 to 72 years. We used a demographic questionnaire, the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R), and the abbreviated version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale. The mean score of the participants on the SCL-90-R was 1.14 (SD = .78), and 16% of the participants scored 1 standard deviation above the mean. Some groups, including women and students, showed more severe psychological symptoms. The obsessive-compulsiveness, interpersonal sensitivity, and depression subscales had the highest three mean scores. We compared the SCL-90-R scores to previous study results and found a significant increase during the pandemic. Finally, individual stressors, COVID-19-related stressors, and perceived loneliness were found to be significant predictors, explaining 31% of the variance in psychological symptoms. Although collecting data online through self-report inventories limits the generalizability of the results, this study has important implications. Its results suggest that future clinical interventions should focus on obsessive-compulsiveness, interpersonal sensitivity, and depression among specific risk groups.

Keywords

• public mental health
• SCL-90-R
• loneliness
• COVID-19
• psychological symptoms