Consequently, it is difficult to estimate the overall trajectory of psychological changes resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. Even the longitudinal study by Wang and colleagues (2020) covered only four weeks after the outbreak with just two time-points. However, these studies are too preliminary to deal with the magnitude and pervasiveness of the psychological effects of the COVID-19 due to their lack of diversity in terms of samples and measures. These studies provided some evidence suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic could have negative effects on individuals’ mental health. The most recent longitudinal study conducted in China across two time-points (during the initial outbreak and peak of COVID-19 four weeks later) found that a significant number of people reported moderate-to-severe stress, anxiety, and depression. Another study from Italy reported that adults in quarantine complained about various negative emotions, such as boredom. For example, researchers showed an increased prevalence of mental problems, such as anxiety and depression, among Chinese during the outbreak. Some preliminary reports on the effects of COVID-19 on individuals’ well-being have been published. All these unexpected and unprecedented life changes and uncertainties lead to a growing concern for the psychological well-being of people, calling for empirical studies on the nature and magnitude of the psychological effects of COVID-19. Individuals’ social lives have also been substantially compromised by the outbreak, as social contacts have been strongly discouraged or even prohibited. Nearly every aspect of human life has been affected, including the economy, travel, politics, religion, education, and international relations. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic is not limited to physical health. No cure or vaccine for the virus was invented at the time of writing this article. Within six months, more than 10 million people around the world were infected, and about 500,000 people have died. Since the first pneumonia case of unknown cause was reported in Wuhan, China, on Novem, the virus has been rapidly spreading worldwide with tragic effects. The beginning of the year 2020 was marked by the global pandemic of COVID-19. However, in compliance with PLOS ONE data access policy, the data underlying the results presented in the study are available from the Kakao Corporation ( The authors did not receive any special privileges in accessing the data from the Kakao Corporation that other researchers would not have.įunding: The present research was supported by the Center for Happiness Studies at Seoul National University.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Due to a non-disclosure agreement with the Kakao Corporation, we cannot make the data set public. Received: AugAccepted: ApPublished: April 23, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Choi et al. PLoS ONE 16(4):Įditor: Vincenzo De Luca, University of Toronto, CANADA (2021) How COVID-19 affected mental well-being: An 11- week trajectories of daily well-being of Koreans amidst COVID-19 by age, gender and region. Implications and limitations are discussed.Ĭitation: Choi I, Kim JH, Kim N, Choi E, Choi J, Suk HW, et al. Finally, daily well-being dropped significantly more in the hard-hit regions than in other regions. Third, the well-being of older people and males changed less compared to younger people and females. Second, unlike other emotions, boredom displayed a distinctive pattern of linear increase, especially for younger people, suggesting that boredom might be, in part, responsible for their inability to comply with social distancing recommendations. First, we found that the well-being of Koreans changed daily in a cubic fashion, such that it declined and recovered during the early phase but declined substantially during the later phase (after COVID- 19 was declared world pandemic by WHO). We analyzed whether and how life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and life meaning changed during the outbreak. The present study examined the daily well-being of Koreans ( n = 353,340) for 11 weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic (January 20 –April 7).
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