AI Article Synopsis

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted women's mental health, leading to greater declines in life satisfaction compared to men.
  • Women initially reported higher life satisfaction levels before the pandemic but experienced a faster decline once it began, which time-use differences could not explain.
  • This study highlights the need for further research to understand and address gender inequalities in mental health outcomes emerging from the pandemic.

Article Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women's mental health. However, most evidence has focused on mental illbeing outcomes, and there is little evidence on the mechanisms underlying this unequal impact.

Aims: To investigate gender differences in the long-term trajectories of life satisfaction, how these were affected during the pandemic and the role of time-use differences in explaining gender inequalities.

Method: We used data from 6766 (56.2% women) members of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). Life satisfaction was prospectively assessed between the ages of 26 (1996) and 51 (2021) years, using a single question with responses ranging from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest). We analysed life satisfaction trajectories with piecewise latent growth curve models, and investigated whether gender differences in the change in the life satisfaction trajectories with the pandemic were explained by self-reported time spent doing different paid and unpaid activities.

Results: Women had consistently higher life satisfaction than men before the pandemic (Δ = 0.213, 95% CI 0.087-0.340; 0.001) and experienced a more accelerated decline with the pandemic onset (Δ = -0.018, 95% CI -0.026 to -0.011; < 0.001). Time-use differences did not account for the more accelerated decrease in women's life satisfaction levels with the pandemic (Δ = -0.016, 95% CI -0.031 to -0.001; = 0.035).

Conclusions: Our study shows pronounced gender inequalities in the impact of the pandemic on the long-term life satisfaction trajectories of adults in their 50s, with women losing their pre-pandemic advantage over men. Self-reported time-use differences did not account for these inequalities. More research is needed to tackle gender inequalities in population mental health.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11698164PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2024.817DOI Listing

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