Mental distress among Norwegian adults during the Covid-19 pandemic: predictors of initial response and subsequent trajectories (original) (raw)

Background: Understanding factors associated with mental distress during a pandemic is imperative for planning interventions to reduce the negative mental health impact of future crises. Our aim was to identify factors associated with change in levels of mental distress in the Norwegian adult population at the onset of the Covid–19 pandemic, relative to pre-pandemic levels, and with longitudinal changes in mental distress until vaccination against Covid–19 became widespread in Norway (the first 1.5 years of the pandemic). Methods: The Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) is a prospective longitudinal study with baseline recruitment from 1999-2009. Baseline characteristics and eight waves of data collection during the pandemic (between March 2020 and September 2021) were used for this analysis. Mental distress was measured with the 5–item version of Hopkins Symptoms Checklist (HSCL–5). A piecewise latent growth model was fitted to identify initial change in mental d...