The COVID-19 Stress and Health Study (UK)

Sly Saint · Apr 12, 2020

How is COVID-19 affecting you?
Exploring the emotional and physical impact of COVID-19 on adults living in the United Kingdom.

The COVID-19 Stress and Health Study is a research study being carried out by the University of Nottingham and Kings College London exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emotional and physical health of adults in the UK. Taking part takes just a few minutes of your time.
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there is a short video which explains about the study; I've not been able to watch it so can't comment.

https://www.covidstressstudy.co.uk/

This research is led by the University of Nottingham (Professor Kavita Vedhara, Professor Carol Coupland, Miss Ru Jia and Dr Kieran Ayling), in collaboration with Kings College London (Professor Trudie Chalder) and Myfertile UK (Dr Adam Massey). The chief investigator is Professor Kavita Vedhara.
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https://www.covidstressstudy.co.uk/contact

John Mac · Apr 12, 2020

My god they've started already

rvallee · Apr 12, 2020

Sly Saint said: ↑

How is COVID-19 affecting you?
Exploring the emotional and physical impact of COVID-19 on adults living in the United Kingdom.

there is a short video which explains about the study; I've not been able to watch it so can't comment.

https://www.covidstressstudy.co.uk/

https://www.covidstressstudy.co.uk/contact
Click to expand...

Chalder? So, not a serious study, then. Sad, this could be useful in competent hands, though that's always doubtful in the land of BPS.

MyFertile UK?

Myfertile is the world's first scientifically proven stress hormone test for fertility.

Myfertile has been carefully developed by fertility experts to assess your long-term levels of cortisol, simply by using a sample of hair.
Click to expand...

So, definitely not a serious study. Suspiciously weird, even. Given the numerous roles played by cortisol, I don't understand this obsession with cortisol = stress. It's so obviously unreliable and will only give flawed results.

Cinders66 · Apr 13, 2020

How delicious to be at kings MH unit and get automatic access to streams of funding.

Sly Saint · May 3, 2020

Conspiracy theories, panic buying and scapegoats: What Coronavirus tells us about human behaviour
Video from the Telegraph

What can our response to pandemics tell us about our social psychologies? Do we panic? What drives us to help one another? And what advice do experts give government based on our behaviours? We unpack the psychology and behaviours of the day, from panic buying and conspiracy theories to a rise in mental health problems.

Contributors in this film:
Professor Sir Simon Wessely - Head of Psychological Medicine at Kings College, London.
Professor Stephen Reicher - Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews
Linda Blair - Clinical Psychologist and Psychology Journalist.
Bryony Gordon - Telegraph Journalist and Mental Health Campaigner
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(loved that the narrator introduced SW as "professor Sir Simon Weasley" around 1.18)

His contribution was the usual historical twaddle; also there was a lot of stuff on fight or flight, cortisol etc but Steven Reicher and Bryony Gordon both point out that a lot of it is 'normal human behaviour' in response to extraordinary circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8KJlsVihI4

auto-generated transcript pt1

in 1918 sailors returning from Dakar on
the west coast of Africa stopped off
their boat in the port of Recife in
Brazil they were sick and within two
weeks new cases were being reported in
Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian
centers authorities skeptical of reports
coming from Portugal and the rest of
Europe did little to make provision for
the arrival of the Spanish flu the
outbreak was fast and ferocious one
witness of the events in Rio de Janeiro
wrote that the number of sick
individuals wasn't as astounding as the
fact that every single person was sick
and there wasn't a way to help to treat
the sick to transport food to sell goods
to fill prescriptions that is to carry
out the most essential tasks of
collective life health and medical
services failed along with basic
essentials like food supply public order
broke down the streets were chaotic with
looting and panic scenes of social
breakdown whilst a common trope of
disaster films aren't as common as one
might believe in crises so what do we
know about our behavior in crises and
what hosts coronavirus revealed about
our social psychology professor Sir
Simon Weasley consults governments on
how to respond to the public when a
crisis arrives he suggests three basic
principles don't give premature
reassurance don't tell people not to
panic and get doctors and scientists on
television as soon as possible when
people advice to those who have to
communicate with the public we always
tell them whatever you do do not tell
people not to panic that's one of the
three golden rules of risk communication
because those who are panicking are
listening to you those who aren't start
to worry that they shouldn't be and
anyway most of the time most of the
people don't panic so we say never use
key word in your public communications
as we know from those who survived the
horrors of war crises generally inspire
people to work together provided they
receive clear messaging from experts and
leaders and the sense that the
government is acting with in their best
interest people are generally motivated
toward action in a crisis such as an
epidemic historically we live in an anti
collective culture where on the whole we
have been told that groups are bad
people the story we've nearly always had
is you know the individual is rational
when alone put them in a group they
become they panic they become a mindless
mob and so on and so forth and a lot of
our work has been showing well no people
don't become irrational they don't
become mindless what they tend to do is
they shift their sense of self from the
individual to the social self and they
shift the norms and values which guide
their behavior from one's own
idiosyncratic norms and values to those
of the group as social animals altruism
is a powerful motivator because
instinctively we understand that our
chances for survival improve with the
greater well-being of our communities
but on an individual level what
psychological mechanisms are at play
Dizzy's outbreaks present us with a
classical dilemma for social response
the tussle between looking after the
needs or self-interest of the individual
that I all that of the greater
collective the them and us and the
choice is driven by one of the two basic
instinctual responses fight-or-flight
versus tendon befriend at the moment so
many of us are anxious and we feel that
the anxiety is a desire to run away
escape hide or combat the problem
fight-or-flight is a primal response to
threat and has a physiological base
preparing one to take action to ensure
individual survival cortisol floods our
brains and causes us to hyper focus
making it harder to look away from a
potential threat but it's not
particularly helpful in the context of
coronavirus because it reduces our
capacity for empathy for calm
rationalization and makes us more
vulnerable to extremism and other hyper
tribal thinking one of the things that
happens in pandemics over the whole of
whom this
as be the repercussions of stigma
prejudice violence and fracture against
the group thought have caused it the
groups who somehow escaped it who have
been treated know the groups have don't
feel they being treated fairly we aren't
all together and then you have long term
Russians and sometimes in history
extremely violent alternatively
with tend and befriend we respond to
danger by tending to ourselves and our
families and befriending others so as to
build social networks of mutual
assistance it's a far more pro-social
response to threat and emphasizes our
interdependence with one another in any
disaster and especially a large-scale
disaster quite frankly the state is not
big enough to look after us there aren't
enough police officers fire officers
care workers and so on we need to look
after each other
and therefore the formation of mutual
aid communities and groups is critical
and that again is facilitated by sense
of shared identity according to the
collective psychology project there are
three particular factors that will
inform these responses the degree to
which we feel agency or the power to
shape our lives our sense of belonging
or connectedness to others and our
culture self-awareness or our ability to
choose and analyze our own responses to
things happening in our lives rather
than instinctual responses from the
amygdala or the part of the brain that
deals with threats and pumps cortisol
the problem with the amygdala is that it
doesn't make a distinction between what
we imagine and what is which is a
problem so we feel distressed if it
might be that something's going to
happen just as much as if something is
happening however if it is happening in
the breast of the brain recognizes that
then the amygdala is quiet no anxiety so
the one thing I can say to people who
are anxious to start off and I always do
is that your anxiety is about what might
be right now you're okay otherwise you
wouldn't be feeling it wouldn't waste
your
energy to fill many of the positive
actions we've witnessed during
coronavirus are built on tend and
befriend Platon for our carers Italians
play music on their balconies hundreds
of thousands of volunteers signing up to
help the NHS captain Tom Moore's 100
garden laps and the daily work of health
care professionals on the front line all
of these acts make us feel like we
belong and give us a sense of agency but
what about some of the negative
behaviours in the early stages of the
outbreak many floated social distancing
advice from spring break to Bondi Beach
to revelers in parks and bars one
possible explanation is our poor ability
to assess risk which is driven by many
factors but includes our tendency
towards optimism bias humans are
naturally optimistic thinkers most
newlyweds believe they're invulnerable
to divorce most smokers think that
they're less vulnerable to cancer a
Research poll completed in late February
of around 4,300 people in Western Europe
found half of them believe they were
less likely to get coronavirus than
others additionally people were poor at
framing the virus in terms that could be
understood early cometary frequently
featured comparisons with seasonal
influenza on the 9th of March President
Trump made a tweet comparing the annual
mortality of influenza to the number of
confirmed coronavirus deaths in the u.s.
experts including dr. Falchi soon
corrected the comparison coronavirus has
a mortality rate 10 times that of
influenza and presents a much greater
threat covered 19 is a novel pathogen
with its own unique characteristics and
outcomes our normal mechanisms for
making predictions didn't work because
nothing before in our lives has happened
like this
and that's why we make comparisons with
diseases like influenza despite
discrepancies early reports also
emphasized the greater threat to the
elderly and those with pre-existing
conditions we now know that whilst this
is true coronavirus can affect both the
young and old the healthy and the ill
in addition the practice of social
distancing is just as much about
protecting others and the broader
community as it is about protecting
oneself understanding all these factors
hampered people's ability to process the
risk panic buying was another behavior
that drew criticism stories of empty
toilet paper and pasta shelves in
supermarkets contributed to our
collective anxiety as people had been
informed there would be lockdown
measures or worse the chance of self
isolation for up to two weeks
if you were sitting at home you were
getting information telling you here's a
scarce resource is about to be locked
down blue roll is kind of useful to have
in such a situation and you're told that
other people are irrationally buying it
up now in that situation it is entirely
rational for you then to go out and say
well I need to get some before it's all
gone
so what people are doing is responding
entirely sensibly and reasonably to
information about the behavior of others
if there's anything dysfunctional here
it's not the psychology it's the
dysfunctional information the problem
arises when people feel they're
sacrificing whilst others are benefiting
it increases anxiety motivating a person
to become more selfish or overestimate
what they need that's part of the
fight-or-flight response and is also
driven by another mechanism the law of
scarcity frequently used in marketing
and advertising when we believe a
product sold out or the inventories low
humans interpret that to mean the
product must be of greater significance
or quality the reason why an increase of
10 to 20 percent in sales leads to empty
shelves nothing to do with psychology
everything to do with the just-in-time
supply systems which mean that nowadays
are like 10 or 20 years ago the stocking
is very fragile if it goes up a bit then
you begin to have empty shelves once it
was clear that supply chains were still
in place the buying Carlmont
[Music]
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Sly Saint · May 3, 2020

transcript pt 2

another example of near panic was the

rapid crash of the markets humans are

highly receptive to other people's

emotional and mental states and the

trading of stocks is highly speculative

movements on the market are deeply

influenced by collective uncertainty and

once the selling commenced it was like a

charge through our collective central

nervous system our behavior is as much

determined by what we think other people

think as what we think ourselves we're

not talking about irrationality we

casually use terms like how many we're

talking about inferences about the

behavior of others and of course in the

market then the behavior of others is

precisely the phenomenon that is

critical in and of itself which makes it

even more sensitive later as the

government stepped in with measures to

reassure confidence

market panic alleviated when a global

crisis arrives our border master

narrative about the world around us

collapses our outlook and understanding

of the things happening in our lives is

turned on its head this is why public

presentations with leaders and

scientists doctors and experts are so

important they provide reassurance and

help us craft a new narrative to

navigate the change in world and the

threat around us alternatively the

vacuum in narrative can be exploited by

conspiracy theories which proliferate in

crises those first theory are nothing

new as they were far more common before

the years read everything so they're

invented by social media but that's

blaming meaning the message if you look

at the tracks and pamphlets around the

great play or even before printing you

will see that miss misunderstandings

conspiracy theories accompanied the

Black Death and it's multiple

appearances but the thing about groups

is they are the best of worlds and

they're the worst of worlds if we create

an intergroup division and we have a

sense that we are being attacked by an

other group then the group can become

truly pernicious and again in pandemics

there is a history whereby out groups

have been blamed for what's happening

and that has led to great violence and

so for instance I mean the huge numbers

of historical studies say about the rise

of anti-semitism during the plague

during that the Black Death on one day I

think it was Valentine's Day thirteen

forty nine two thousand Jewish people

were burnt in one day in Strasbourg and

that was part of a the ethnic cleansing

of a genocide that killed more than five

hundred Jewish communities in Europe

because viral outbreaks are an

existential threat

conspiracy theories can offer a source

of a blame and a place in which to

direct action usually the theories we

gravitate towards tell us a lot about

ourselves and our confirmation bias but

rather than decreasing anxiety research

shows it actually increases it along

with an even greater sense of

disillusion and powerlessness there are

some and all who are absolutely certain

that they have discovered the theory of

everything they often have high degrees

but they're usually loners they're

usually very distant from other people

they don't have a way to verify what it

is they think they know conspiracy

theories offer a physical threat to from

spikes in xenophobia and violence to

potentially harmful medical advice

during the h1n1 swine flu pandemic

conspiracy theories in the u.s.

suggested that undocumented migrants

were being exploited by terrorists to

spread the virus whilst outside of

America some theories argued that the

virus was purposefully being spread by

American authorities to benefit

pharmaceutical companies

from the perspective of our social

psychology conspiracy theories foster

distrust in experts the government

science and the science community people

turn to sources of information that

polarized few points or proliferate fake

news the greatest struggle against a

viral outbreak is undermined once

segments in society's silo fragment and

distrust the information they're

receiving which has an impact on the

drive to tend and befriend or to work

together it's not a sense of

helplessness which makes you vulnerable

but rather a sense of agency that makes

you invulnerable so far coronavirus has

offered a wealth of its own theories

from early suggestions that it was an

overblown invention by media groups to

sway political interests or that

pharmaceutical companies have introduced

the virus to manipulate the market and

make gargantuan vaccine profits or the

claim that 5g is a technology built to

transmit the virus the twin problem of

conspiracy theories is number one they

helped turn the positives of the group

into the negatives of the group they

lead from the inclusive way to a

divisive we and they and secondly they

avoid our own responsibility and our own

complicity of these problems and project

them onto that demonic other so they are

they are truly corrosive of the the

things we need to get through the

pandemic effectively as lockdowns to

battle the viral outbreak are extended

globally concerns regarding mental

health and ongoing isolation amounting

studies have been done on the

psychological outcomes of people who

were quarantined during outbreaks of

SARS h1n1 flu Ebola and other infectious

diseases many individuals experienced

both short and long term mental health

problems including stress insomnia

emotional exhaustion and substance abuse

the thing that all mental health issues

have in common via them depression or

anxiety or schizophrenia you know from

all them one extreme to another

is that they light you and they tell you

that you're a freak and they tell you

that you're alone and they take that no

one understands what you're going

through I think it is um I think it's

absolutely you know normal you know more

than ever to be feeling weird right now

a meta-analysis of 70 studies that

followed 3.4 million people over several

years found that the likelihood of dying

during the study increased by 29% for

those who were socially isolated or by

32% for those living alone the secondary

effects of the pandemic recession social

unrest unemployment / trigger even wider

mental health challenges the group I'm

feeling part of a group is probably the

most powerful health prophylactic we

have probably much more powerful but

like any pill that we've discovered to

date that sense of community that sense

of us that sense that others are there

to support and help you lead you to

believe that you can cope more that it

reduces stress and that has implications

of both mental and physical well-being

connection is so important in keeping us

well you know we know that just human

touch and hugging can bring our heart

rate down you know there's all sorts of

reasons why we do this um and I think

instinctively and I know that there's a

lot of other people who have had

experienced a mental illness who felt

this that I've spoken to that they're

getting blocked down we felt quite

prepared for it we were like this is

we've been waiting for this our whole

entire lives

you know we thrive in an isolation but

actually if the things that we really

don't want to do that are actually

really important in in keeping us

healthy and well and I'm not talking

about you know extremely I'm talking

about little things like meeting up with

someone for a coffee that you'd rather

not and all that and so when you strip

out all those little daily interactions

and even the things that you do want to

do

you quite quickly find yourself going

into that default depressive state we

need to manage our mental and emotional

states not only for our own well-being

but because our Ren estates affect

others around us and that's the point to

social psychology the state of the world

affects our state of mind and our state

of mind affects the world around us

forever I mean you know it'll and we'll

learn something from it it's shown us

all under abilities and that's not a bad

thing it's something that will bring

about huge social change and not

necessarily just for the worst

the only havea you can change you know

actually you can't change people around

you as long as you're doing your best

that's enough
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Simbindi · May 3, 2020

Sly Saint said: ↑

Conspiracy theories, panic buying and scapegoats: What Coronavirus tells us about human behaviour
Video from the Telegraph

(loved that the narrator introduced SW as "professor Sir Simon Weasley" around 1.18)

His contribution was the usual historical twaddle; also there was a lot of stuff on fight or flight, cortisol etc but Steven Reicher and Bryony Gordon both point out that a lot of it is 'normal human behaviour' in response to extraordinary circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8KJlsVihI4

auto-generated transcript pt1
Click to expand...

I have a lot of respect for Steve Reicher - he is one of the originators of 'participant based research' in social psychology. I met him at a BPS Social Psychology conference as an undergraduate. I would have been happy to have him as my PhD supervisor when I was looking at doing this 20 odd years ago, but for the fact he was in Edinburgh! At the time I was studying my MSc in Psychological Research Methods at Exeter University they wanted him to become their head of the Psychology department but there was no way he was going to leave St Andrews. They did manege to get his (young at the time) mate, Alex Haslam to join the department though, he was a breathe of fresh air in the lecturing staff.

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