Background: The COVID-19 outbreak raised questions about how people experience their mental health, quality of life (QoL), wellbeing and loneliness in the context of social distancing, and the use of social media during this time Aims: To examine the experience of mental health, QoL, wellbeing and loneliness and use of social media among people living in Norway, USA, UK and Australia. Methods: A crosscountry comparative survey of people living in Norway, USA, UK and Australia. Relevant statistical analyses were used to examine differences between the countries and to explore associations between demographic, mental health and psychosocial variables and use of social media. Results: There were 3810 respondents from four countries, of which 50 À 74% showed a high level of emotional distress. The Norwegian population reported significantly better mental health, QoL and wellbeing and lower levels of loneliness compared to the other countries. High-frequent use of social media after the COVID-19 outbreak was associated with poorer mental-and psychosocial health. Conclusions: The results suggest that the COVID-19 outbreak took a toll on people's experience of mental health, QoL, wellbeing and experienced loneliness, and high-frequent use of social media was associated with these factors.

Background/Objective: The most common used instrument to measure optimism, both in psychological and medical research, is the Life Orientation Test- Revised (LOT-R). A multi-countries study using the future item from the LOT-R, found that level of optimism varied between countries. The provision of population-based norms is necessary, since norms enable the application of the LOT-R in individual diagnosis to compare individuals or special patient groups’ scores with reference data. Method: A representative population based survey was conducted in 2014-2015. Norwegian aged 18–94 years (N = 1,792) completed questionnaires assessing sociodemographic, optimism and health and quality of life. Results: The mean age was 53.2 (SD = 16.6) and 53% were women. Mean LOT-R score was 17.2 (SD 3.0). There were marginal age and no gender differences. Although optimism was associated with sociodemographic variables, these were considered negligible due to small effect size. Norm data are given for the entire population. Optimism was associated with better health and quality of life. Conclusions: This study provides age and gender specific norm values from a representative sample of the Norwegian population. The normative data may be used in comparisons of optimism between individuals or between different samples of patients or sub-groups of people.

ObjectivesThe aim of this review was to explore the notion of alcohol-related presenteeism; that is, whether evidence in the research literature supports an association between employee alcohol consumption and impaired work performance.DesignSystematic review of observational studies.Data sourcesMEDLINE, Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, AMED, Embase and Swemed+ were searched through October 2018. Reference lists in included studies were hand searched for potential relevant studies.Eligibility criteriaWe included observational studies, published 1990 or later as full-text empirical articles in peer-reviewed journals in English or a Scandinavian language, containing one or more statistical tests regarding a relationship between a measure of alcohol consumption and a measure of work performance.Data extraction and synthesisTwo independent reviewers extracted data. Tested associations between alcohol consumption and work performance within the included studies were quality assessed and analysed with frequency tables, cross-tabulations and χ2tests of independence.ResultsTwenty-six studies were included, containing 132 tested associations. The vast majority of associations (77%) indicated that higher levels of alcohol consumption were associated with higher levels of impaired work performance, and these positive associations were considerably more likely than negative associations to be statistically significant (OR=14.00,phi=0.37, p<0.001). Alcohol exposure measured by hangover episodes and composite instruments were over-represented among significant positive associations of moderate and high quality (15 of 17 associations). Overall, 61% of the associations were characterised by low quality.ConclusionsEvidence does provide some support for the notion of alcohol-related presenteeism. However, due to low research quality and lack of longitudinal designs, evidence should be characterised as somewhat inconclusive. More robust and less heterogeneous research is warranted. This review, however, does provide support for targeting alcohol consumption within the frame of workplace interventions aimed at improving employee health and productivity.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42017059620.