58%

44%

41%

27%

Trouble sleeping is one of the most common forms of distress measured in the surveys. In the latest survey, about two-thirds of adults (64%) reported trouble sleeping at least some or a little of the time during the past week. A similar share (61%) said they had felt nervous, anxious or on edge.

Experiences with depression and loneliness also register with sizable shares of Americans. In the most recent survey, 46% of adults said they had felt depressed at least one or two days during the past week, and 42% said they had felt                                                   





lonely.

This assessment of the public’s psychological reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak is based on surveys of members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) conducted online several times since March 2020. The mental health questions were included on four surveys. The first survey was conducted among 11,537 U.S. adults March 19-24, 2020; a second survey with the question series was conducted April 20-26, 2020, with a sample of 10,139 adults; a third survey was conducted February 16-21, 2021, among 10,121 adults; and the most recent survey was conducted September 13-18, 2022, among 10,588 adults. Additionally, researchers analyzed a subsample of 5,007 respondents who participated in each of the four surveys to examine psychological distress over time.The ATP is an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. The group of respondents who participated in each of the four surveys was similarly weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. Here is more information about the ATP. The psychological distress index used here measures the total amount of mental distress that individuals reported experiencing in the past seven days, as captured by questions measuring

sleeplessness,
 anxiety,
depression,
  loneliness,

and physical reactions experienced when thinking about the outbreak. The low distress category includes about half of the sample; very few in that group said they were experiencing any of the types of distress most or all of the time. The middle category includes roughly a quarter of the sample, while the high distress category includes 21%. A large majority of those in the high distress group reported experiencing at least one type of distress most or all of the time in the past seven days.This research benefited from the advice and counsel of the COVID-19 and mental health measurement group from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH): Catherine K. Ettman (JHSPH); M. Daniele Fallin (JHSPH, now at Emory University); Calliope Holingue (Kennedy Krieger Institute, JHSPH); Renee Johnson (JHSPH); Luke Kalb (Kennedy Krieger Institute, JHSPH); Frauke Kreuter (University of Maryland, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich); Elizabeth Stuart (JHSPH); Johannes Thrul (JHSPH); and Cindy Veldhuis (Columbia University, now at Northwestern University).Here are the mental health questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and the detailed survey methodology statements for surveys conducted in March 2020, late April 2020, February 2021 and September 2022.