New research published today in The Lancet Psychiatry warn that lessons have not been learned from the pandemic when it comes to mental health. The researchers recommend that mental health should be treated as a core consideration when it comes to pandemic preparedness, rather than a downstream consequence.
The research was performed by an international group of experts, including from low and middle-income countries, and people with lived experience of mental illness or long COVID. They examined the different responses from governments around the world, and reviewed existing evidence, to assess what policies were most effective for protecting mental health.
The research was conducted over five years, meaning that the study could review the higher quality, often long-term studies, which have emerged since the pandemic and the initial deluge of small, and less informative studies from the early days of the pandemic.
The findings have been...