Background The COVID-19 pandemic triggered vast governmental lockdowns. The impact of these lockdowns on mental health is inadequately understood. On the one hand such drastic changes in daily routines could be detrimental to mental health. On the other hand, it might not be experienced negatively, especially because the entire population was affected. Methods The aim of this study was to determine mental health outcomes during pandemic induced lockdowns and to examine known predictors of mental health outcomes. We therefore surveyed n = 9,565 people from 78 countries and 18 languages. Outcomes assessed were stress, depression, affect, and wellbeing. Predictors included country, sociodemographic factors, lockdown characteristics, social factors, and psychological factors. Results Results indicated that on average about 10% of the sample was languishing from low levels of mental health and about 50% had only moderate mental health. Importantly, three consistent predictors of mental health emerged: social support, education level, and psychologically flexible (vs. rigid) responding. Poorer outcomes were most strongly predicted by a worsening of finances and not having access to basic supplies. Conclusions These results suggest that on whole, respondents were moderately mentally healthy at the time of a population-wide lockdown. The highest level of mental health difficulties were found in approximately 10% of the population. Findings suggest that public health initiatives should target people without social support and those whose finances worsen as a result of the lockdown. Interventions that promote psychological flexibility may mitigate the impact of the pandemic.

Abstract. Experiential avoidance, the tendency to rigidly escape or avoid private psychological experiences, represents one of the most prominent transdiagnostic psychological processes with a known role in a wide variety of psychological disorders and practical contexts. Experiential avoidance is argued to be based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process: an overextension of verbal problem solving into the world within. Although cultures apparently differ in their patterns of emotional expression, to the extent that experiential avoidance is based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process, measures of this process should be comparable across countries, with similar relationships to health outcomes regardless of the language community. This research tests this view in European countries. The psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II, a measure of experiential avoidance, are compared across six languages and seven European countries, for a total of 2,170 nonclinical participants. Multiple group analysis showed that the instrument can be considered invariant across the language samples. The questionnaire constitutes a unidimensional instrument with similar relationships to psychopathology, and has good and very similar psychometric properties in each assessed country. Experiential avoidance reveals not just as transdiagnostic, but also as a transcultural process independent of a specific language community.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants (N = 9,496) from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions.

The results suggest that attentional modulation is impaired in schizophrenia and in the schizophrenia spectrum.