Women’s Mental Health During COVID-19 in South Africa

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aut.relation.journalApplied Research in Quality of Life
dc.contributor.authorKopylova, Natalia
dc.contributor.authorGreyling, Talita
dc.contributor.authorRossouw, Stephanié
dc.date.accessioned2024-01-25T21:45:02Z
dc.date.available2024-01-25T21:45:02Z
dc.date.issued2024-01-20
dc.description.abstractWomen’s mental health vulnerability, already a concern before the COVID-19 pandemic, has been exacerbated due to social isolation and restrictions on daily activities. This paper aims to follow a cohort of women from pre - to during the pandemic to determine the change in their mental health using the PHQ-2 scale (a mental health screening tool). Additionally, we investigate whether women with depressive symptoms before the pandemic suffered similarly to those without while controlling for pandemic-related factors. Primarily, we use the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey dataset and apply pooled ordered logit and fixed effects ordered logit models. We find that the value of the PHQ-2 scale significantly increased during the first period of the pandemic and then eased over time. Interestingly, the behaviour of the individual scale items differed over time. This result questions the internal reliability of the scale during the pandemic and the importance of analysing the scale items individually. Furthermore, being depressed before the pandemic increases the probability of ‘depressive feelings’ and does not matter for ‘anhedonia’. Other factors increasing the probability of mental health disorders are taking care of children for 13–24 h a day and living with a person who has gone hungry. In contrast, wearing a mask and living in a grant-receiving household decreases the probability. These findings inform future researchers of the unexpected behaviour of scales and policymakers of the vulnerability of women’s mental health during unprecedented times, given their vital role in increasing the well-being of future generations.
dc.identifier.citationApplied Research in Quality of Life, ISSN: 1871-2584 (Print); 1871-2576 (Online), Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi: 10.1007/s11482-024-10276-2
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s11482-024-10276-2
dc.identifier.issn1871-2584
dc.identifier.issn1871-2576
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10292/17142
dc.languageen
dc.publisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC
dc.relation.urihttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-024-10276-2
dc.rightsOpen Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
dc.rights.accessrightsOpenAccess
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject1608 Sociology
dc.subject1701 Psychology
dc.subjectSocial Psychology
dc.subject4410 Sociology
dc.subject5201 Applied and developmental psychology
dc.titleWomen’s Mental Health During COVID-19 in South Africa
dc.typeJournal Article
pubs.elements-id535872
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